Several killed, lakhs homeless as flood situation worsens in UP, Bihar
NATURE’S WRATH NDRF teams rushed to marooned areas for relief operation
VARANASI: Swollen Ganga affected lives of 5 lakh people in 424 villages of three eastern UP districts, while the river began receding in Patna though 24 of Bihar’s districts continued to be under water on Wednesday.
Two people perished in the last 24 hours in Uttar Pradesh which had 150 villages completely marooned, even as the death toll in Bihar rose to 127 with 29.71 lakh people in 4,222 villages and 146 talukas being affected in the deluge caused by rivers Ganga, Sone, Punpun, Burhi Gandak, Ghaghra and Kosi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to the people in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi, tweeting his office “is closely monitoring the situation & is in touch with local authorities”.
NDRF teams have been sent to Varanasi, besides Allahabad, Ghazipur and Ballia, UP relief commissioner DK Singh said. A total of 8.7 lakh people in 987 villages were affected by the flood in that state.
“Flood waters have affected two more districts—Mirzapur and Mahoba. Now, 28 districts of the state are affected,” he added.
The Ganga touched danger mark in Kanpur district’s villages of Katari area, prompting authorities to issue an alert and shift residents to safer places.
In three eastern UP districts, including Varanasi, 127 mud houses and 984 huts were devastated. Thousands of hectares of crops were flooded.
In Bihar’s Bhojpur district, authorities took 17 hours—after an intervention by the state disaster management brass— to evacuate a heavily-pregnant woman from flood-affected Sinha village. Seema Devi, 22, was rushed to the district hospital.
In Patna, the Central Water Commission predicted a sixcm decrease in the level of the Ganga by Thursday morning.
Authorities in Bihar said they evacuated 2.82 lakh people so far. A total of 778 relief camps were being run in the flood-hit areas, giving shelter to 5,99,606 people. The most affected districts were Patna, Bhagalpur, Munger and Buxar.
Rising waters in Varanasi have affected 1.97 lakh people of 124 villages. “Of these, 59 villages are marooned. The flood has affected around 30,900 hectares of crops and devastated 107 mud houses and damaged 745 huts,” a top official said.
The situation was still worse in Ghazipur, where the flood affected 259 villages, disrupting the life of 2.24 lakh people. Crops were submerged on 27,000 hectares of agricultural land.
Flood has also hit life in 41 villages of the adjoining Chandauli district, where 16 flood outposts have been set up.
With agency inputs
The Surrogacy Regulation Bill is a good bill presented using the wrong argument. It bans commercial surrogacy, but allows Indian couples who have been married for five years to opt for altruistic surrogacy if the surrogate is a close relative.
But Indian single women, “live-in” couples and gay couples don’t get the altruistic option because, said external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, “we don’t recognise homosexuality and live-in relationship. It is against our ethos.”
The crux of the problem for her doesn’t seem to be infertility, childlessness or surrogacy, but morality. The minister has decided that single women should not have sex, gay men having sex should be arrested, and people in “live-in” relationships are not morally fit to bring up children.
Anything against “our ethos”, which Swaraj envisions clearly in black and white despite India’s technicolour canvas, has to be banned. The minister’s self-righteousness has taken away the focus from the person this law is supposed to protect: the poor woman who rents her womb.
The fact is that surrogacy pregnancies are not conceived naturally and infertility specialists inject a surrogate woman with hormones for weeks to prepare the uterus to accept the foreign embryos.
At whatever cost, she mustn’t
ANYTHING AGAINST “OUR ETHOS”, WHICH SUSHMA SWARAJ ENVISIONS CLEARLY IN BLACK AND WHITE, HAS TO BE BANNED