CORRIGENDUM NOTICE

together—covid-19 and cyclone. We are also creating awareness about Covid-19 while creating awareness about Amphan and evacuating people,” Pradhan said.

He cited one example what it means to confront two such challenges simultaneously. If a cyclone shelter has a capacity of 1,000, because of social distancing norms and the need to maintain adequate sanitation to curb the spread of Covid-19, only 400 to 500 people can be sheltered there, said Pradhan.

Amphan had been billed as the first super cyclone in the Bay of Bengal since a 1999 storm devastated Odisha, killing around 9,000 people.

“After the 1999 super cyclone, this is the most intense .... Though its wind speed will reduce to 155 to 165 kmph, gusting to 185 kmph, we can expect extensive damage and devastation in South and North 24 Parganas and East Medinipur,” IMD director general M Mohapatra said at a media briefing on Tuesday.

The storm surge is expected to be 4 to 6 metres above the astronomical tide in parts of West Bengal, flooding low lying areas in the three districts when it makes landfall. Wind speeds in Kolkata, Hooghly and Howrah are likely to range between 110 kmph and 120 kmph, gusting to 130 kmph.

Gale-force winds of 75 to 85 kmph, gusting to 95 kmph, are likely to lash the north Odisha coast, including Jagatsinghpur, Bhadrak, Balasore, Kendrapara and other areas.

Meteorologists and climate scientists said that on Monday evening the intensity of Amphan was 145 knots, or 270 kmph. The wind speed passed the 1999 super cyclone velocity of 260 kmph, tweeted meteorologist Eric Holthous, based on data from the Us-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Bay of Bengal recorded sea surface temperature of 32 to 34 degree Celsius prior to the formation of cyclone Amphan, Roxy Mathew Koll, climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said.

“We have never seen such high values until now. Tropical cyclones draw their energy from the ocean surface and these temperatures can supercharge a cyclone, leading to rapid intensification. Cyclone Amphan intensified from a category 1 to a category 5 cyclone in only 18 hours, it evolved into the strongest cyclone ever recoded in Bay of

Bengal,” Koll wrote in a social media post on Twitter, sharing sea surface temperature data from the buoys of the National Institute of Ocean Technology.

Sunita Devi, cyclone scientist at IMD, said the wind speed was 130 knots, or about 240 kmph. “Yes, ocean surface temperatures were high. The sea surface temperature was in the range of 30 to 31° Celsius on Monday, as compared to an expected temperature of 28° Celsius over the region,” Devi said.

“On Tuesday, the maximum temperature is around 30° C. The cyclone is still bordering a super cyclone. Its intensity hasn’t reduced much. We are expecting it to make landfall as a very severe cyclonic storm, again bordering an extremely severe cyclonic storm,” Devi added.

Amphan was a massive cyclone 700 km in extent and 15 km in height when it was rotating around its centre in the central parts of Bay of Bengal on Monday, Mohapatra had said, adding that its very rapid intensification was unusual.

The cyclone is expected to cause heavy to extremely heavy rainfall over Gangetic West Bengal and heavy to very heavy rainfall over north coastal Odisha. It will also cause heavy to very heavy rainfall over sub-himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim on May 20 and 21 and Assam and Meghalaya on May 21.

IMD is expecting extensive damage to thatched houses, some damage to old, ramshackle concrete structures; uprooting of communication and power poles, disruption of rail/road links at several places, extensive damage to standing crops, plantations and orchards. Large boats may get torn from their moorings.

NDRF has 15 teams in Odisha; 19 in West Bengal and two in reserve for rescue and relief efforts. government official who asked not to be named.

There are around 700000800000 Indian students abroad. This, though includes students at all levels. The number of undergraduate students isn’t known; nor is the average number of students who apply for overseas under-graduate courses from India.

“We will look at the number of students, who apply in this category and then think about other courses,” said the official. Significantly, the JEE (Main) is a highly competitive exam.

The real battle, the official admitted, is to retain students who go abroad for post-graduate degrees -- MBA and MS, for instance.

“We would definitely want our institutions to prepare a strategy on this count. Especially because many IITS do struggle to fill up seats in their post-graduate courses.”

Eminent educationist and former UGC member, Inder Mohan Kapahy, said the amount being spent by Indian students abroad is a substantial one and the government should work to get them into the country’s leading institutions.

“Steps to persuade brilliant Indian students to study in India is always welcome. Covid-19 may have provided an opportunity for giving an additional chance to IIT but efforts must be made in all fields of higher PG studies and research. A rough estimate is that Indians spend about Rs 50,000 crore per year to study abroad. That is about $70 billion. We have now so many eminent and A++ Universities and IHES. We can attract students from abroad,” said Kapahy.

On Twitter, Goyal also said the railways will increase the number of Shramik Special trains to 400 a day — from the current 150 — within the next two days. “All migrants are requested to stay where they are, Indian Railways will get them back home over the next few days,” he said.

On May 1, the government began operating Shramik Special trains after demands by several states.

And on May 12, Indian Railways resumed its passenger services after a gap of nearly two months with 15 pairs of trains connecting Delhi with Dibrugarh (Assam), Agartala (Tripura), Howrah (West Bengal), Patna (Bihar), Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Secunderabad (Telangana), Bengaluru (Karnataka), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Madgaon (Goa), Mumbai Central (Maharashtra), Ahmedabad (Gujarat) and Jammu Tawi (Jammu and Kashmir).

Railways stopped its passenger services in an unprecedented move on March 22 in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The 167-year-old rail network of India ran nearly 14,000 passenger trains and ferried 23 million passengers a day before the lockdown.

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