NALBARI, Sept 12: The flood waters of Barnadi river, a lifeline of Tamulpur area in Nalbari district, this year caused immense miseries to the inhabitants of three villages, Garobasti, No-1 Ourangzuli and No. 2 Ourangzuli, forcing at least 74 families to shift to safer places. The poor families mostly belonging to Nepali community have been taking shelter in the block development office since August 5. But they are passing their days in starvation as the devastating floods also robbed them of their sources of livelihood.

Worse still the state government has not taken any steps for the rehabilitation of these homeless families except providing a few relief materials during the flood period.

When the Barnadi river changed its course through the heart of these villages on the night of August 5, the villagers became marooned and finding no other option they raised much hue and cry for help. Armymen from the Tamulpur base airlifted the marooned families to safer places and airdropped some food among the flood victims. The changing course of the river damaged more than a hundred dwelling houses, besides claiming a life.

When this correspondent recently visited the affected villages he found that the villagers are not in a position to go back to their old lands as the new course has eroded vast areas. The remaining areas also have been affected due to two to three feet silt and sand deposition.

While talking to The Assam Tribune one of the flood victims Lal Bahadur Chetri of Garobasti village who is still in the relief camp, said he has no alternative than to stay at the relief camp as the new course of the river is flowing through residence.

PATHSALA, Sept 10: A section of villagers of Bhukamari-Koiharjhar near here have repaired a severely eroded portion of Pahumara embankment near the village after having lost their hope that it might be repaired by the 'finance-starved' State government.

AGARTALA,Sept 10: Tripura's surface communication remained cut off from the rest of the country during the past one week following landslides on the Assam-Agartala National Highway at Sonarpur in Meghalaya.

State's Food and Civil Supplies Minister Gopal Das told today that Border Roads Organization(BRO) workers were working round-the-clock to clear the debris and mud and added that parts of lower Assam and Mizoram were also cut off due to the landslip.

Mr Das quoting BRO sources said it would take at least four days to restart normal traffic on the National Highway, considered as life line of Tripura.

Thousands of vehicles, including goods trucks, were stranded due to landslides thus severely affecting life in the landlocked state.

Jorhat, Sept 8: Inhabitants of the world's largest river island of Majuli are fighting a losing battle against erosion, a realisation that has sparked a frantic scramble for land.

The sense of desperation in the air is reflected in the number of land disputes on the island. Officials say the majority of cases registered at the three police stations in Majuli pertain to land ownership.

"Land is becoming more scarce with every passing day. Under the circumstances, no one wants to give away even an inch of land," a police official posted at the Garmurh police station told The Telegraph today.

Last night, one Binoy Baruah of Garmurh was killed by his brother Niranjan following a dispute over land.

Police sources said Niranjan attacked Binoy with a sharp weapon, killing him on the spot. He was later arrested.

Constant erosion by the Brahmaputra, also known as the "red river," has reduced Majuli's area from 1,200 square km in 1950 to approximately 800 square km today.

Over the past couple of years, hundreds of families rendered homeless by floods have shifted to embankments and are subsisting on relief materials provided by the subdivisional administration.

The pottery industry at Salmora, the only one on the island, is also on the verge of being wiped out. The Brahmaputra ate into a large portion of the area last year, forcing at least 20 families making a living out of pottery to shift to other places on the island.

The Jorhat district administration has evacuated several families to the mainland and plans to continue the process. However, it failed in its attempt to settle 68 families at Panikheti on the Assam-Nagaland border in the district a couple of months back.

These families had to return to Majuli as inhabitants of the areas close to Panikheti opposed the administration's move.

Largescale erosion by the Brahmaputra has also forced some satras (Vaishnavite monasteries) on the island to shift elsewhere. Some invaluable manuscripts preserved in these satras were destroyed by floods in recent years.

TEZPUR, Sept 8: Tezpur Central University (TU), one of the finest products of the Assam Accord, established by an Act of Parliament and formally declared open by the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao on January 21, 1994 at Napaam, 15 km east of Tezpur is today facing serious threat from the erosion caused by river Jiabhorali, one of the major tributaries of river Brahmaputra. Talking to this correspondent, sources said the snapping of the road linking Tezpur University through Pachmile area has brought all the construction activities to a halt as the Pachmile road has been badly damaged and severely eroded by the river Morabhorali, another tributary of Brahmaputra which has recently changed its course. Even University classes had to be discontinued for few days during the second wave of floods by river Jiabhorali and Morabhorali which posed threat to the University campus. Although an alternative entry route to the University through Solmara cantonment area has been provided temporarily it is alleged by the student community that they are being harassed by Army personnels. Sources said the site selected for the University campus was infact a river bed and at one time a tributary of Jiabhorali flowed through the area alleging that Brindaban Goswami, local MLA despite of knowing the fact, selected the present University site hurriedly without conducting proper geomorphological survey. Further, the University authority considering the erosion threat has suggested the government that a second campus should be set up, sources said, adding that the University authority has already suggested the Bhomoraguri hill near Bhomoraguri bridge on the outskirts of Tezpur town as a suitable site for Tezpur University without requiring felling trees or disturbing the natural environment.

NAGRIZULI (Nalbari), Sept 6: The flood situation in Nagrizuli area of Nalbari district has improved, but the woes left behind by the floods are yet to be over as the new course of the Barnadi river coming down from the Bhutan hills in full speed has posed serious threat to the State's one of the best and biggest tea estates situated here. The Barnadi river breached an embankment at Garobasti village and changed its course towards the tea estate owned by the Calcutta-based Rossell Tea Limited. The original course of the river has dried up due to silt deposition at its mouth. Meanwhile, the garden authority and the local public have expressed fear that if the State Government fails to divert the river to its original course with effective protection works, then there will be no signs left of the tea estate in the coming days. In addition to the major loss of the Rossell Tea Limited, about 3000 families earning livelihood at the garden will lose their jobs if the government remains a silent spectator to this vital problem.

The river with its new course, has already eroded more than eight hectares of crop land of the tea garden, besides washing away various old trees of the tea estate worth lakhs of rupees. The devastation caused by the river is continuing. The flood waters of the river submerged about 20 hectares of the garden area and damaged tea plants as the river deposited one to two feet of sand and silt. This is likely to affect the productivity of the tea plants, it was observed. When this correspondent along with a team of the Nalbari district committee of AASU led by its secretary in charge Narayan Kalita, visited the affected areas on Thursday, he found the river was showing a tendency to erode the land on its right side. The concerned government authority had taken up no protection works to prevent the tendency, which resulted in extensive damages in the recent floods. While talking to The Assam Tribune, the manager of the Nagrizuli tea estate Sri Hari Narayan Gogoi said that the Rossell Tea Limited which newly owned the garden and took it over in October last year suffered a great loss in the floods. The garden authority has been spending sleepless nights as the river is likely to change its course again at any moment through the heart of the garden as the inner protection bund of the garden, constructed way back in 1984 was also washed away by the river.

SILCHAR, Sept 6: Traffic on the National Highway-44 which links Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and Barak Valley with Guwahati has been suspended since Sunday due to heavy landslides. About 300 metres of the road near Sonapur, 80 km from here, has been cut off for which hundreds of trucks loaded with consumer goods and petroleum products and night and day-service buses with passengers have been stranded.

Last month too, this highway had been closed for more than two weeks due to landslips on the same spot. The driver and his two assistants of a loaded truck which was coming from Guwahati to Silchar had a miraculous escape then. Before the truck could slide down, they managed to come out of the vehicle.

With the supply line cut off, the States affected including the valley are not going to face shortage of essential consumer items immediately. Nor is there any apprehension about the rise in prices of consumer and commercial goods. As an official of the Supply Department said, "The North-east this time has the best-ever buffer stock level of more than 2.5 lakh tonnes of PDS food grains."

SIVASAGAR, Sept 4: Participating in the monsoon session of Parliament, Mr Bijoy Krishna Handique, MP from Jorhat called upon the Union Government to make serious thinking over the devastating flood situation in Assam every year. Mr Handique regretted that every year in the monsoon session of Parliament, the devastating flood situation in the State comes up for discussion with all seriousness and by the time the monsoon session of Parliament is over, the monsoon also recedes and every one forgets about the seriousness of the flood situation. He said that this had been going on year after year and with this attitude, there will never be an end to the serious flood problem in the State.

Giving statistical details about the flood situation this year, Mr Handique said that three waves of flood since April this year affected about 26 lakh people in 16 districts of Assam and 25 people even lost their lives. There had been 25 breaches of embankments. Three lakh hectares of land including 123,569 hectares of cropland were submerged in flood water. Besides disruption of rail and surface communication for a long stretch of time during the flood with its serious adverse impact on the economy of the State, the important industrial town of Dibrugarh in upper Assam had been seriously threatened by the severe erosion of the river Brahmaputra. This has been going on for the last several years without any effective anti-flood and anti-erosion measures taken so far.

The second wave of flood that struck in June this year very badly affected Dhemaji and Lakhimpur districts on the northern bank of the river Brahmaputra, Mr Handique said and added that 38,840 people of 64 villages in Dhemaji district and 28,000 people of Dhakuakhana subdivision were badly hit. The second wave of flood alone affected 482,220 people of 1,428 villages, Mr Handique informed Parliament.

Taking a very serious note on the meagre financial assistance from the Union Government, the MP from Jorhat, quoting a reply from the Union Agriculture Minister, said that only Rs 37 crore had been released by the Union Government for various flood control measures. The Union Agriculture Minister justified this meagre allocation of fund as, according to the Union Agriculture Minister, 4,560 km of embankments and 945 drainage channels were already constructed in Assam. Mr Handique informed the minister that these were done in a span of 15 to 20 years. Construction of embankments and drainage channels are not enough unless they are strengthened and repaired every year, Mr Handique said.

Mr Handique also informed Parliament that bungling by the State Government in tackling the flood and erosion problem in the State was also responsible for aggravating the situation. He cited the case of Nemati in Jorhat district and added that in 1992, at his initiative, the work on preparing a scheme was started by the District Flood Control Department to check erosion at Nemati. The scheme was completed in 1994 with an estimated expenditure of Rs 32 crore. The scheme was then sent to Pune Laboratory by the Union Water Resources Ministry for further investigation. The laboratory okayed the scheme by the year 1995. Since it was then too late to be taken up on Central Government assistance, the then Central Government was advised by the Planning Commission to initiate the project on Central Government loan assistance scheme which could later be converted into a Central Government assistance scheme under which 90 per cent of the total cost of the project would come as Central grant and 10 per cent from the State Government fund. Accordingly, the Planning Commission even released Rs 1 crore by the end of the year 1995. But the work could not be started in view of the 1996 parliamentary and Assembly elections. But after the elections were over, the State Government could not spend this amount of money fully. Nor did the State Government ask the Union Government for conversion of the scheme from Central Government loan assistance scheme to Central Assistance scheme.

Regretting that the Brahmaputra Board could not do any meaningful research in respect of flood and erosion control, Mr Handique informed Parliament about the Diroi Drainage Scheme in Sivasagar district. This scheme has been baffling the engineers of the Board who, accompanied by him, even visited the site for investigation. But till date, the Board engineers failed to work out any scheme. He also disclosed that for want of fund, erosion of the river Dehing in Sivasagar district at Laibil threatened extinction of a large number of tribal villages.

NALBARI, Sept 4: The flood affected people in the greater Barbhag in Nalbari district are facing lots of difficulties due to the recent havoc created by the flood in that area. The entire Barbhag area covering 51 villages under upar Barbhag mouza, pub Barbhag, Khpta, Bahjani and a part of paschim Barigog mouza were affected by the recent flood caused by the Pagaldia river. Several houses got washed away and large number of paddy fields were submerged under water. The communication was disrupted as many DRDA roads remained under knee-deep water. The important bridge near Sonakuriah-ghat over Pagaldia river was washed away by the current of the river making the communication very difficult.

People of the greater Barbhag area sent a memorandum through the Deputy Commissioner, Nalbari and urged the Chief Minister, Assam to take up immediate action so that problems of the flood affected area could be solved. The memorandum demanded permanent solution of flood problems, to take immediate step for the construction of a RCC bridge of Sonkuriahghat over Pagaladia, for immediate construction of RCC bridge at Damalghat of Marowa-Kamalpur road, to complete the bridge at Ulabarighat and to take up immediate step to repair the flood affected damaged rural roads.

People of a few village in the greater area are suffering from viral fever, flood borne disease like diarrhoea etc. It is alleged that, no proper treatment to those sick people was timely provided as a result of which people felt helpless. Life saving medicines in the flood hit area was reportedly insufficient.

One leading citizen, Mr Phanidhra Tamuli staged a one-day hunger strike in front of the office of Nalbari District Students' Union in protest against the non fulfilment of problems of flood hit area of Barbhag from 6 a.m. recently.

GUWAHATI, Sept 3: The creation of reservoirs on the Dihang (Siang), the Dibang, the Lohit and the Subansiri rivers will not only help control the devastating annual flood in the Brahmaputra valley but also benefit the valley through hydel power generation. Additional benefits of the creation of reservoirs will be improved navigation scope along these rivers, irrigation and the possibility of transfer of water not needed for use in the Brahmaputra valley to other parts of the country.

Presenting a paper on "an Approach to the Control of Floods in the Brahmaputra Valley" at the seminar organized by the Manav Sarathi an NGO working on devising plans and schemes to control the perennial flood in Assam here yesterday, the former vice-chairman of the Brahmaputra Board and former Chairman cum-Managing Director of the NEEPCO, Mr S. N. Phukan said that although studies had been carried out in 1983 by the Brahmaputra Board for the storage provision on the Dihang river in Arunachal Pradesh and the Subansiri river in Assam, the project proposal for the storage provision met with strong opposition from the Arunachal Pradesh Government fearing that the project, if implemented, would submerge some villages in the Arunachal valley. The Brahmaputra Board, now has to revise the storage proposals to avoid inundation of villages and towns, he added.

Mr Phukan said that the attractive feature of the storage proposals was the cheap hydroelectric power, which could be generated from the storage projects. "The 1983 proposals envisaged the generation of 20,000 MW of power below the Dihang dam and 4,800 MW at the Subansiri dam," he mentioned in his paper, adding that the Brahmaputra Board should not miss the opportunity to invest in such projects.

Speaking at the seminar the president of the Manav Sarathi, Ms Manjushree Pathak said, the width of the Brahmaputra valley is approximately 80 to 90 km, but in comparison to the length and breadth of the river, the river bed is too shallow to hold the total volume of water flowing over it. "In course of time and due to the natural processes of sedimentation and erosion, the river bed is rising sharply and the Brahmaputra is considered to be the second most mud and sand-carrying-river" she said, adding that large-scale deforestation in Arunachal Pradesh was responsible for floods in Assam.

IMPHAL, Sept 3: Several villages as well as thousands of hectares of paddy fields in Thoubal district have been inundated by flood waters following torrential rains for the past two days in the valley areas of the State. Water level is some important rivers like Nambul and Iril, which flow through the Imphal West and East districts, have risen above the danger mark. Flood fighters including the officials of the Irrigation and Flood Control Department (IFCD) have been alerted and homeless people have been shifted to safer places in Thoubal district. However, so far there is no report of any loss of life in the State. Around 2000 to 3000 hectares of paddy fields have been inundated at a time when the harvest season is just round the corner. A stretch of about 50 to 60 feet of the Thoubal river embankment near Ningombam broke down under the pressure of the surging waters around 3 pm on Friday. Another stretch of embankment of about 40 to 50 feet near the house of one ex-commissioner Mangijao at Thoubal Singam village was breached at around 3.30 pm on the same day. This was followed by breach of a 50 to 55-foot embankment at Thoubal Okram Mamang Leikai, Thoubal Phoudel and Thoubal Kshetri Leikai areas. Besides the breaches at various sites, waters overflowing from Thoubal river submerged Thoubal Haokha, Ningonmab, Thoubal Okram and Kshetri Leikai areas, sources added.

There are also reports of non-availability of any flood control materials till late in the night on Friday at these flood-hit areas. Most of the homesteads in these areas were in knee-deep water. One chain bridge on Thoubal river between Ningombam and Okram has also collapsed at one end under pressure of the surging flood water. On the other hand, the activities of the Thoubal district flood control room and other relief and rescue operation works have been severely hampered by flooding of roads at many places.

IMPHAL, Sept 2: Heavy rains during the past two days have triggered severe floods in Thoubal district. Five rivers in the district have breached their banks since yesterday, inundating a large number of villages and damaging standing crop.

Sources in the state irrigation and flood control department said all the major rivers in Manipur valley were flowing above the danger level. The Iril, Imphal and Nambal rivers have crossed the danger mark, an official said.

The Sekmai, Arong, Thoubal, Manipur and Wangjing rivers in Thoubal district have overflowed. The rivers have breached their banks in at least 15 places in Thoubal district. Flood control offices are working on a war footing to tackle the problem.

Official sources said nearly 20 villages have been inundated by flood waters in the district. Over 7,000 houses have been affected by floods in the district and 10,000 hectares of paddy fields inundated in Thoubal district. The offices of the Thoubal district deputy commissioner and superintendent of police and the Thoubal police station are now under water. This is hampering relief work. National Highway 39 has been flooded at Khangabok.

Flood control officials are distributing gunny bags and bamboo matting to individuals, local clubs and gram panchayats. The state government has opened flood control offices in all the valley districts. However, even the flood control room at Thoubal has been flooded.

The state government has started distributing relief materials and food items to affected villagers. Most of the villagers in the district have been evacuated to safer places. The floods have caused damage worth crores of rupees. However, there was no report of any casualty till this evening.

In Imphal district, the Kongba river has overflowed in many places. Flood waters have entered residential areas of Imphal East district.