CM Nitish Kumar faces protests from flood victims in Katihar

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar faced stiff protests from hundreds of flood victims on Sunday at Kadwa, the worst affected block in Katihar district.

Several flood victims rejected relief material and demanded permanent solution from recurring floods, which have posed livelihood problems in several areas of Katihar.

Later, the CM interacted with a few flood victims at Dukhiram upgraded high school at Chandpur and enquired about the relief and rescue operations being carried out by the local administration.

Flood victims alleged that several areas in Katihar have been long neglected by both the district administration and the Bihar government. “We have been facing floods for a long time and every time all we get are assurances,” a local said, demanding a lasting solution for floods.

Locals accused the district administration of adopting complete apathy towards flood victims of Kadwa and Balrampur. “Ever since floods started, neither officers nor leaders came to meet us,” said another local.

The CM issued strict warnings to officers against their lackadaisical attitude and assured the flood victims of taking solid steps to ensure a permanent solution for the floods. He later spoke to officers of the water resources department and engineers of the Mahananda embankment.

More than 150 villages in Kadwa block are highly affected by floods. Nearly 4 lakh people in Mahananda in Balrampur, Azamnagar and Pranpur blocks are still reeling under the floods. Chief minister Nitish Kumar directed officials to speed up rescue and relief operations in the flood hit areas. The CM expressed dissatisfaction over the slow pace of relief and rescue work.

Earlier on July 15, the CM had conducted an aerial survey of flood affected areas of Seemanchal, and had held a meeting with officers at the Airforce station at Chunapur in Purnia.

On Sunday, the CM was accompanied by Katihar JD-U MP Dulal Chandra Goswami, Congress MLA Punam Paswan BJP MLA Tarkisho Prasad, CPI (ML) MLA Mehboob Alam, Kadwa Congress MLA Shakeel Ahmad Khan, Bihar state disaster management secretary Pratyaya Amrit and others.

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First Published: Jul 22, 2019 15:17 IST