Be prepared to manage waterlogging: CM Mohan Majhi to officials
Addressing the revenue officers' workshop here, Majhi said, 'It rained so heavily in Old Town area of Bhubaneswar yesterday that the road got damaged and the water couldn't be drained out.'
This has happened when Asadha month is yet to begin, the chief minister said, while underlining that there could be urban flooding and damage to infrastructure due to heavy rains during monsoon and SOP should be followed to deal with it effectively.
Heavy rain on Tuesday evening caused substantial damage to the Badagada Canal road in Old Town area of the city disrupting connection to the main route. Locals raised strong concern over the matter and also complained about the same to mayor Sulochana Das during her visit to the site.
As it is, the CM has already asked BMC authorities to complete the ongoing drainage and desiltation works by June 20.
Majhi, who had chaired a high-level meeting with authorities of H&UD department last week, has sought adequate measures to address the problem of waterlogging near Iskcon Temple, Cuttack road, Ahalya Nagar, Ayurveda College and other vulnerable areas of the state capital.
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a day ago
- First Post
Monsoon fury in Himachal: 69 dead, dozens missing as landslides and floods wreak havoc
Heavy rains have played havoc in some parts of the country with 69 people getting killed and 37 missing in Himachal Pradesh in the last two weeks. read more Advertisement Representational Image Heavy rains have played havoc in some parts of the country with at least 69 people have lost their lives, 37 remain missing, and 110 have been injured as Himachal Pradesh continues to grapple with the devastating impact of relentless monsoon rains, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Friday. Days of heavy and continuous rainfall have triggered cloudbursts, flash floods, and landslides across the hill state, leaving a trail of destruction and prompting large-scale rescue and relief operations. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD A red alert for heavy rainfall remains in effect for all districts until Monday, July 7, with authorities warning of further disruptions. Emergency teams have been deployed to the worst-hit areas, while roads and infrastructure across multiple districts have suffered extensive damage. The Chief Minister said 'Since the rains began, 69 people have lost their lives, 37 people are missing, 110 people have been injured, and damages worth approximately Rs 700 crore have been incurred… Roads and water projects have been damaged, electricity wires and poles have been uprooted, causing significant losses. Such devastation has struck Himachal Pradesh at the very onset of the monsoon." He further said that incidents of cloudbursts have been reported at 14 locations. 'We are studying why cloudburst incidents are occurring so frequently… The 92 students who were stranded at the Horticulture College have been rescued… Reports of extensive damage are coming in from all areas. The government stands with the disaster-affected families and has decided to provide Rs 5,000 to affected families for renting accommodation,' he added. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Residents of Odisha's capital Bhubaneswar continued to face a harrowing time as several low-lying areas remained waterlogged on Friday. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) struggled to clear the water as the drainage system went kaput. Heavy rains in several parts of Madhya Pradesh crippled normal life on Friday, with the IMD issuing a 'red alert' for Mandla, Seoni and Balaghat districts in the eastern part of the state. Rain lashed more than 27 districts in the last 24 hours, officials said. The national highway connecting Jabalpur and Mandla districts witnessed traffic snarls after a landslide on the stretch caused by rains, the officials said. The monsoon hit Himachal Pradesh on June 20 and has already cost the state Rs 5,000 in damages due to cloudbursts, flash floods and landslides. Of the 43 people killed in the hill state, 14 died in cloudbursts, eight in flash floods and one in a landslide, while seven were drowned. The most deaths, 17, took place in Mandi district where 10 instances of cloudbursts, flash floods and landslides wreaked havoc on Tuesday. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD A search is still on for 31 people missing from this district alone, officials said. On Friday, the soldiers from the National Disaster Response Force rescued 65 people trapped in Bharad, Deji, Payala and Rukchui villages after heavy rain. The downpour, followed by landslides, damaged roads and caused rivers to swell, which cut off many villages and deposited debris to people's houses and fields. More than 150 houses, 106 cattle sheds, 31 vehicles, 14 bridges and several roads have suffered damage, while 164 cattle have perished in the various inclemencies. Five relief camps have been set up to house the 402 people rescued, 348 of them from Mandi alone. The State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC) said 280 roads, including 156 in Mandi, 49 in Sirmaur and 36 in Kullu districts, were rendered out of bounds for vehicular traffic. It said 332 transformers and 784 water supply schemes have been disrupted in the state. The local Met office has issued an orange alert, warning of heavy to very heavy rain in isolated parts of the state from Saturday to Tuesday. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Amid heavy rains in another hill state, Uttarakhand, two IAF personnel drowned in a swollen lake in Bhimtal, officials said on Friday. Prince Yadav (22) from Pathankot, Punjab and Sahil Kumar (23) from Muzaffarpur in Bihar were part of a group of eight IAF personnel, including four women, vacationing in Nainital, Circle Officer Pramod Shah said. Locals joined the police in the rescue operation to pull Yadav and Kumar's bodies out of the lake after a struggle that lasted almost an hour, he added. The rains which have been battering the state have affected daily life with the closure of more than 100 roads across the state, disrupting the Chardham Yatra and causing food grain shortages in some villages in the Geeth area of Uttarkashi district. Home Minister Amit Shah spoke with Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday to assess the situation in the disaster-sensitive districts of the state, including Kedarnath Dham in the Rudraprayag district. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Dhami shared this development in a post on X, stating that the Home Minister assured him that the Central Government's emergency relief agencies, including the NDRF and ITBP, are being deployed promptly. This is to ensure that the Chardham Yatra remains uninterrupted and that devotees do not experience any inconvenience while travelling. In the eastern part of the country, waterlogging continues in low-lying areas of Bhubaneswar. BMC Commissioner Rajesh Prabhakar Patil visited some of the affected areas, including Laxmisagar and Badagada and instructed civic personnel to clear the water on a war footing. In some good news, train services to parts of Northeast — Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and Assam's Barak Valley — were restored on Friday, a day after disruptions due to landslide in Dima Hasao district, an official statement said. A Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) release said services on the Lumding-Badarpur hill section were successfully restored in the morning. Services were disrupted between Dihakho and Mupa stations on Thursday evening, as large boulders fell on the tracks following the landslide. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Continuous efforts throughout the night ensured the debris was cleared and the tracks were safely restored, the NFR statement said. Overcast conditions and drizzle covered Delhi on Friday, with the national capital under an orange alert amid forecasts of light to moderate rain, thunderstorms, or lightning, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. The city is under an orange alert, according to the IMD, with a warning of light to moderate rain accompanied by thunderstorms or lightning. To ensure animal safety and prevent flooding in enclosures during heavy rainfall, the National Zoological Park in Delhi has ramped up staff preparedness, initiated key infrastructure repairs, ordered new water pumps and adopted traditional remedies like turmeric and neem oil to deal with seasonal infections and flies. Last year, the zoo faced a lengthy power outage and flooding in several enclosures after water entered a transformer. In western India, Pokhran in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer district recorded 128 mm of rain in a day under the influence of the southwest monsoon, even as a few areas in the state continued to reel under intense heat. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Widespread rainfall was observed across the state in 24 hours till Friday morning, with heavy to very heavy showers reported in parts of western Rajasthan, the weather department said. With inputs from agencies
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Indian Express
Delhi gets DGCA nod for first cloud seeding trials to tackle air pollution; ‘historic achievement', says Minister Manjinder Sirsa
Delhi has become the first state in India to receive final clearance from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for conducting cloud seeding trials aimed at reducing pollution, according to officials in the Environment Department. Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa announced the development on Tuesday, calling it a 'historic achievement' and a major step forward in Delhi's fight against air pollution. Cloud seeding has been spoken about for years but never implemented, Sirsa said. The method involves dispersing hygroscopic particles like sodium chloride below the cloud layer to encourage rainfall and help wash out pollutants from the atmosphere. The trials, originally planned for early July, will now be held between August 30 and September 10, over areas including Alipur, Bawana, Rohini, Burari, Pavi Sadakpur and the Kundli border. 'For ten years, it remained only on paper. We took it up, secured all approvals including from the DGCA, and now Delhi will finally witness cloud seeding,' he said. The aircraft to be used for the operation is a Cessna 206-H (VT-IIT), operated by the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IIT Kanpur. It is fully fitted with cloud seeding equipment and will be manned by a trained crew with prior experience in similar missions. Sirsa added that while the original window approved by the DGCA was July 4 to 11, experts from the India Meteorological Department and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, advised postponing the exercise. The experts cited that weather conditions during that time were not ideal for cloud seeding. Based on their recommendation, IIT Kanpur and the Delhi government requested a revised schedule, now approved for the end of August to early September, the minister explained. The DGCA's permission comes with strict conditions. The flights must be conducted under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), with full visibility of terrain at all times. Use of aerial photography or videography is banned during operations, and the aircraft must stay within approved airspace. Operators must also coordinate closely with Air Traffic Control, report any abnormal incidents, and ensure that all activities are properly documented. Sirsa said the effort is part of the larger Environment Action Plan 2025, which aims to prepare Delhi for the winter season when air quality typically worsens. 'These trials will give us critical data to fine-tune and scale up cloud seeding efforts later in the year. Our aim is to create a cleaner winter for Delhiites,' he said. He also pointed out that Delhi is the only city where both the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal had to intervene due to the poor air quality. 'That pressure was a result of inaction in the past. Today, under the leadership of Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a Viksit Delhi, we're changing that. We're not waiting for court orders — we're taking action,' he said. Taking a jibe at previous governments, Sirsa said, 'They spent a decade writing letters. We secured approvals within four months after several rounds of meetings. The aircraft is ready, the equipment is in place, and the pilots are trained.' To help assess the success of the initiative and explore the possibility of wider implementation in the future, the data from the trials would be shared with central pollution control authorities, scientific agencies, and the courts, Sirsa said.
Hindustan Times
4 days ago
- Hindustan Times
Delhi defers cloud seeding project to late August due to ongoing monsoon
The Delhi government has deferred its first-ever cloud seeding project to late August, citing active monsoon conditions that are not conducive to the experiment, environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said on Tuesday. Clouds over the Red Fort on Tuesday as the city recorded maximum and minimum at 35.1°C and 25.2°C, respectively. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo) The minister confirmed that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has granted approval for the trial. Besides, a budget of ₹ 3.21 crore has been allocated for the pilot project, the minister said. The trials, originally planned between July 4 and July 11, will now be conducted between August 30 and September 10, after inputs from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), IIT-Kanpur, and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, indicated that the early-July weather window was unlikely to yield optimal conditions for seeding. 'Cloud seeding trials will be conducted after the monsoon starts to recede. This revised window will allow us to target the right type of clouds and collect accurate scientific data,' Sirsa said at a press briefing, citing a statement from Professor Deepu Philip of IIT-Kanpur, which is leading the project. Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique in which aircraft disperse hygroscopic particles—such as sodium chloride or other aerosols—into clouds to stimulate precipitation. In Delhi's case, the project aims to use this technique to trigger artificial rain and help wash pollutants from the air. The minister said five sorties will fly over north Delhi and surrounding areas, including Rohini, Bawana, Alipur, and Burari, as well as adjoining regions of Uttar Pradesh such as Loni and Baghpat. HT had reported on Saturday that the government had submitted a detailed report from the IMD to the DGCA, along with a flight path map. The proposed flight would pass over north Delhi, covering areas including Rohini, Bawana, Alipur, and Burari. Adjacent regions in Uttar Pradesh, such as Loni and Baghpat, are also expected to benefit from any resultant rainfall. The government has allocated ₹ 3.21 crore for five cloud seeding trials. The operations will be conducted using aircraft cleared by DGCA, with strict adherence to safety norms. 'Aircraft will not fly over prohibited areas, and no aerial photography will be conducted during the mission,' Sirsa said. The trials will be led by the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IIT-Kanpur, using aircraft number VT-IIT (Cessna 206-H), which has been fully fitted with cloud seeding instrumentation. The flight crew has prior experience in similar missions and holds all necessary licenses and certifications, the minister added. Explaining the operational process, Sirsa said the aircraft will fly below the cloud base, releasing hygroscopic particles to stimulate rain formation. 'This will aid precipitation and help with pollutant washout, which is a key objective of the project,' he said. This will be Delhi's first attempt at cloud seeding—a method previously used in cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, and even internationally in countries such as the UAE and China—to either combat drought or improve air quality.
