Ahmedabad: 18 of the total 30 sluice gates of the Vasna barrage on river Sabarmati on the outskirts of the city have been opened up to six feet each to prevent any sudden surge of the river in the wake of the release of large amount of water from the Dharoi Dam on the same river near Dharoi in Mehsana district of north Gujarat.

However the discharge of water from Dharoi dam has now reduced considerably. The water discharged early morning had arrived Lakroda in neighbouring Gandhinagar district at 7 pm with a slower than anticipated flow and is likely to reach Ahmedabad by 11 pm or later. Meanwhile the water level of Sabarmati in Ahmedabad has decreased by around half a meter owing to continuous discharge through the opened gates of Vasna barrage.

All the 102 gates of the lower promenade of the Sabarmati riverfront have also been closed and around 160 guards have been deputed to check any illegal entry. Police vans and Ahmedabad municipal corporation vehicles are also making announcement in the low lying areas like Chandrabhaga, Bakrol, Fatehwadi, Piplaj, Pirana and Gopalpur for people to be on alert.

The main control room of the AMC informed that the water released from Dharoi dam in the wake of the heavy rainfall in the upstream areas in neighbouring Rajasthan is likely to reach Ahmedabad at around 11 pm or later. ‘Till early morning the release of water from Dharoi was around 30 to 32 thousand cubic meter per second (cusec) while from around 8 am till six to seven pm it had been increased to around 54000 cusec but now it has decreased considerably to only around 20000 cusec . It was not as huge as the last year’s release of around 2.5 lakh cusec from the same dam which flooded several low lying areas in and around city and submerged parts of lower promenade of the riverfront in July 2015,’ an official on duty in the main control room said today.

‘We are constantly monitoring the movement of the discharged water which has arrived Lakroda in neighbouring Gandhinagar at around 7 pm and will take another at least four hours to reach Ahmedabad from there as the flow of the water was not as fast as anticipated earlier. it is hoped that the water level of the river will not surge very much. Currently the water level was at 125.5 ft at Vasna while the danger mark is 137. It has come down around half a meter owing to constant discharge from the opened sluice gates. We don’t think that with 18 gates wide open the water level would cross the danger mark. If the need be we would open even more gates of the barrage to let the excess water pass,’ he said.

Notably, more than 1,500 people, including 500 people from the city, were evacuated to safer locations due to sudden floods in the Sabarmati river after water was released from the Dharoi dam in July last year. The water level dramatically rose after 2.5 lakh cusecs of water was released into the river then following heavy rainfall in the catchment areas. Around 1,000 locals of 13 villages situated near the banks of the Sabarmati river were also shifted to safer locations.

This time round also alerts have been sounded in many such areas.

PTI