LAWYER, 2 COPS DIE OF DENGUE IN PATNA

Dengue outbreak claimed the life of a senior lawyer Rajiv Lochan of Patna High Court on Wednesday. Rajiv was an assistant government prosecutor too. He was admitted to a private hospital where he died on Wednesday.

Two sub-inspectors of Patna police also died of dengue in last 24 hours. They were staying in the residential quarters at the Patna Police Lines. According to their colleagues, they were suffering from high fever and died late last night. Over 40 policemen and officers including city SP Vijay Tiwari are afflicted with dengue and admitted to different hospitals.

Two BJP MLAs of Patna town repesenting Digha and Bankipore Sanjeev Chaurasia and NItin Navin are also in the grip of jaundice and have been advised complete rest by the doctors.

There are 1,600 dengue patients being treated at different hospitals in Patna on Wednesday. There is no improvement as water-logging continued in several parts of Patna even after two weeks of the end of the rainfall. Ramkrishna Nagar, Devnagar, Gola Road are still under knee-deep water. It has turned into a law and order problem also as the residents blocked movement of vehicular traffic on the national high-way leading to the state capital .

Patna High Court is scheduled to hear over 100 petitions filed by citizens on the government's failure to end water-logging on October 18.

Meanwhile, the state government ordered the transfer of divisional commissioner Anand Kishore, who was earlier municipal commissioner of Patna, principal secretary of urban development department Chaitnaya Prasad, managing director of Bihar Urban Infrastructure Development Corporation Amrendra Kumar Singh holding them guilty of negligence during the floods.

A four-member committee of state government officials has been set up and asked to submit a report within a month. The committee headed by development commissioner A K Singh has three senior IAS officers A L Meena, S Sidharth and Pratayay Amrut as members.