Bhubaneswar

Ten Odisha districts in the downstream of the Mahanadi have been put on high alert as the Hirakud Dam kept discharging water into the river through 22 gates on Saturday, inundating low-lying areas.

The deluge has hit more than 8.34 lakh people in 20 districts of the coastal state, damaging civic infrastructure and hectares of cropped land.

This apart, floods caused by overflowing Salangi, Brahmani, Baitarani, Jalaka and Budhabalang rivers damaged over 1,300 houses in north Odisha, officials said. Bhadrak was the worst-affected district, followed by Jajpur, Balasore and Mayurbhanj.

Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, who returned here on Friday night after a four-day visit to the national capital, is conducting an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas along with Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Suresh Pujari and senior officers.

Majhi's Delhi visit had led to the BJP's rivals accusing the ruling party of lacking sincerity in tackling the calamity, with leader of opposition Naveen Patnaik asking whether "the leaders were feasting in Delhi amid the flood horrors".

Pujari had countered the charge, saying the chief minister was discharging "Raj Dharma" by pursuing a resolution to the Mahanadi water dispute with Chhattisgarh in the national capital, an issue the previous Naveen Patnaik dispensation had failed to resolve.

Odisha's Special Relief Commissioner Rajesh Prabhakar Patil said 10 downstream districts of the Mahanadi have been put on high alert.

Special focus is on Cuttack, Puri, Khurda, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapada districts, which have been identified as highly vulnerable for being located in the Mahanadi delta area, an official said.

The other districts in Mahanadi basin on high alert were Angul, Boudh, Sambalpur, Subarnapur and Nayagarh.

The water level in the Hirakud Dam was 625.47 feet against its full capacity of 630 feet. “Since the inflow to the dam is about 4.15 lakh cusec, the reservoir level will certainly rise in a few hours. The average outflow was 3,89,603 cusecs," the official said.

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Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Pujari hoped for an improvement in the flood situation, noting that there has been no rain for the past two days and water discharge from the dam appears to have stabilised.

Officials said the water level at the Mundali barrage near Cuttack has also come down to about 7 lakh cusec from 8.88 lakh cusec on Thursday night.