Flooded northeast wants a rain check

GUWAHATI: The Brahmaputra breached the danger mark in the city on Sunday, touching 50.42 metre and inching closer to the highest flood level Guwahati has ever seen — 51.46 metre recorded 15 years ago.
The danger mark for the Brahmaputra’s water level is 49.68 metre. The Assam State Disaster Management Authority has not declared Kamrup (Metro), which covers the city, as a flood-affected district yet. District officials said they have been monitoring the situation.
Parts of two parks in the city — Shankardev Udyan and Azan Peer Park in the Fancy Bazar-Machkhowa area — remain inundated. All sluice gates to the Brahmaputra remain closed. Ferry services between the southern and northern banks of the Brahmaputra in Guwahati remain suspended. However, officials in the Kamrup (Metropolitan) District Disaster Management Authority said the rising water level does not pose any threat to commercial and residential areas in and around Fancy Bazar.
The increasing water level also led to cracks in a portion of the busy MG Road in Fancy Bazaar later in the day. “An underground water supply pipeline had been laid beneath the road, which had not been properly repaired ever since. The increasing water level of the Brahmaputra made it worse,” a district official said.
Sources in the district administration said officials are more concerned over chances of landslides in the hillocks of Guwahati in the coming days as heavy to very heavy rain is likely to lash parts of Assam and the northeast till Monday. “We are trying hard to convince people residing in the landslide-prone of Guwahati to shift to safer locations during the rainy season,” said a government official.
With IMD predicting heavy rain in several upper Assam districts — including Tinsukia, Dhemaji, Lakhimpur and Biswanath — on Monday, no respite is in sight.
Meanwhile, the All Assam Student’s Union lashed out at the Centre for “not finding a pragmatic solution” to the state’s flood and erosion problem.
“The Centre has never tried to address the flood and erosion problem of Assam as a national calamity. Like the government under Congress, the BJP-led government is also hoodwinking the people of Assam and not taking urgent steps to find an amicable solution to the perennial flood,” the student body said in a statement.