Patna: Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday inspected flood-hit areas along the Ganga in Bihar and assured affected residents that the Centre would stand firmly with the state govt in rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts and provide every assistance.Chouhan said the scale of damage and Bihar’s requirements would be placed before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. He assured that necessary action will be taken in the direction of how maximum assistance can be made available to Bihar in the present circumstances.Chouhan said houses damaged in the floods would be built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and necessary support would be made available to Jeevika Didis.Accompanied by chief minister Samrat Choudhary, Chouhan first conducted an aerial survey of flood-affected parts of Maner in Patna district and Dighwara in Saran district. The two then travelled to Vaishali district and reviewed flood conditions in Raghopur assembly constituency, long considered a stronghold of RJD president Lalu Prasad’s family.Lalu’s son and leader of opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav currently represents Raghopur in the Bihar assembly.In Raghopur, Chouhan and Choudhary visited inundated villages by boat and assessed waterlogging and crop destruction. They later rode a tractor to Terasiya and Saraipur, met residents and received applications. People complained of severe losses and demanded that roads be raised, new roads constructed and compensation paid for crops destroyed by floodwaters.Chouhan said Raghopur had witnessed unprecedented flooding this year, with the water level one foot higher than in 2016. He said banana and maize crops had been submerged and destroyed. Across Bihar, about 50 lakh people had been forced to leave their homes, while crops, houses and livestock suffered extensive damage.He said the state govt, under Samrat’s leadership, was actively engaged in relief work and had started giving Rs7,000 to each flood-hit family as immediate assistance.Chouhan said he had come to Bihar on Modi’s direction to review the situation and assess damage. He said another central team would visit the state to assess losses, while the state govt was currently helping victims from its own resources. Roads, crops and houses had been damaged, and the Centre would extend assistance accordingly, he said.Chouhan and Samrat also inspected relief camps at Navagarhi in Munger district, Inter-level High School at Sheetalpur on the Sitakund campus, and Bhagalpur Polytechnic relief camp in Bhagalpur district.After a review meeting in Patna, Chouhan said floods had caused heavy damage to infrastructure and crops, including banana, maize, paddy and others. He said work would be taken up to provide high-quality seeds of banana, maize and litchi to improve crop quality, raise farmers’ income and strengthen prospects for exporting Bihar’s agricultural produce to foreign markets in the coming seasons.
