Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, attacked the Jharkhand government on Thursday, claiming that the state’s flood crisis has worsened because the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) is releasing water from its dam to save Jharkhand.
She declared that the border between Bengal and Jharkhand will be closed for three days and gave the order to seal the interstate border.
She declared that the DVC was to blame for the “man-made” floods in Bengal and threatened to break all connections with the company.
She also accused the government of neglecting to perform dredging at the DVC dams, allowing water to leak out and causing flooding in a number of West Bengali districts.
Mamata Banerjee travelled to Udaynarayanpur in the Howrah district and Panskura in the Purba Medinipur district to keep an eye on the flood situation.
“This is not rainwater; this is water released by the government organisation DVC from its dams. This is a man-made flood, and it’s unfortunate. Why isn’t the Centre dredging the DVC dams, where the water storage capacity has decreased by 36 percent? There is a larger conspiracy at play. This cannot continue, and we will start a major movement against this,” she was quoted as saying by news agency in its report.
“The flood situation in West Bengal is because of DVC’s unbridled release of water from its dams to save Jharkhand. We will not keep any ties with DVC,” she added.
Chief Minister claimed that Bengal was the victim of a “well-planned conspiracy” to place it in this predicament.
“This is a first for history. I’m afraid of what I’ve witnessed. We hold meetings every now and again. I personally gave the chairman of the DVC a call and asked him to hold off on releasing too much water. Floods are mostly caused by water released from Jharkhand in south Bengal, and by water from Nepal and Bhutan in north Bengal “she added.
She said that Bengal is experiencing flooding as a result of the DVC releasing 5.5 lakh cusecs of water this year.
“Yeah, we could have dealt with the four to five days of rain. Our infrastructure is sufficient,” she remarked.
