The flood situation in four states of India remained grim on Wednesday with almost 860 000 people displaced, officials said, as the death toll from the latest lashing monsoon rains rose to 196.
Southern Andhra Pradesh state remained the worst hit with 543 000 people displaced by flood waters and 106 people dead in the past week, senior administration official Priyadarshini said.
Crops over an area of about 364 200ha were destroyed and about 71 000 houses destroyed or damaged in six districts, Priyadarshini said in the state capital, Hyderabad.
Six air-force helicopters and 10 naval boats have been deployed to rescue marooned people and drop food, drinking water, milk sachets and medicines to those still trapped, she said.
The chief of India’s ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, and federal home minister Shivraj Patil were on Wednesday to conduct an aerial survey of the flood-affected areas in Andhra Pradesh.
In western Gujarat state, 190 000 people have been shifted from Surat, famous for its diamond-polishing industry, an official from the state flood-control room said.
”There have been no rains overnight so the flood situation is expected to ease,” the official said on condition of anonymity. ”We have the army — about 300 personnel — and the air force to help us in the relief work.”
Five people had been washed away by flood waters in the state, the Press Trust of India news agency said.
In neighbouring Maharashtra state, thousands left homeless by the monsoon rains in 15 of the state’s 35 districts are being airdropped food and medicines, a state official said.
The death toll due to rains and floods in the province has risen to 62 with 105 000 people displaced, said Bhupathy Pandey, Maharashtra’s relief and rehabilitation secretary. People in another 184 villages will need relocation as many of the dams and rivers in the state are overflowing, he added.
In the Maoist insurgency-affected tiny central state of Chattisgarh, 20 000 people have been evacuated to 19 relief camps, an official said.
Eight were reported killed in Chattisgarh and another 15 in Leh, capital of the Buddhist section of Kashmir state, at the weekend.
The latest deaths took the nationwide death toll linked to the annual monsoon rains since mid-May to 573, 196 of them in the past eight days alone, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. — Sapa-AFP