With the discharge of water from Sonna Barrage in Afzalpur taluk of Kalaburagi district touching 8 lakh cusecs on Saturday, river Bhima got more ferocious, flooding vast tracts of farmlands and villages along its course in Afzalpur, Chittapur, Jewargi, Kalaburagi and Shahabad taluks.
As Deputy Chief Minister and Kalaburagi in-charge Govind Karjol put it, for the first time in the history, as much as 8 lakh cusecs of water is flowing in the Bhima.
“Even in 2009 floods, the amount of water flowing in Bhima had not crossed 2.60 lakh cusecs. Now, 8 lakh cusecs is flowing, destroying thousands of houses that were built using mud and stone in the villages along the river course downstream. Sonna Barrage that had never been submerged in its history is now under water,” he said in a video message on Friday.
The ferocity of current in Bhima is so high that the floodwater is flowing back in Kagina river, the tributary of Bhima, near Honagunta village in Shahabad taluk where the latter joins the former.
Deputy Commissioner of Kalaburagi, Vijaya Jyothsna, has cautioned people that the discharge of water from Sonna Barrage is expected to rise. She is releasing video-messages appealing to the people along the banks of Bhima and Kagina downstream to immediately move to safer places and cooperate with the administration in rescue operations.
Rescue teams of Indian Army and Air Force have joined the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams that were already on the job. No loss of human life has been reported in the past 48 hours.
Owing to the heavy rainfall in the region coupled with the heavy discharge of water from Maharashtra reservoirs, all the rivers, tributaries and streams in the district had been overflowing for the last one week flooding the hundreds of villages and destroying farmlands. Though the rains in the region have subsided for the last three days to bring down the water level in Kagina and other streams, the water level in Bhima is constantly rising due to the heavy rainfall in its catchment area in Maharashtra and resultant discharge of heavy water from Ujjani and Veer reservoirs in the neighbouring State.
