Gandhinagar: Amid heavy rain and grave flood in North Gujarat, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani today hold another high level review meeting and said that the state government was taking various steps and even the Prime Minister and PMO was keeping a close eye on the situation.

He also said that heavy rain warning was still on for coming three days and a high alert has been sounded owing to it.

CM Rupani also announced that in the wake of the floods and rain, the state government had postponed the fortnight long Narmada Mahotsav slated to be held from July 27 (to celebrate the closure of gates on Sardar Sarovar dam ) and the Ahmedbad Heritage city related event for August 6 instead of earlier planned August 1.

He said that so far 162 people have been rescued from flood affected areas in Banaskantha and Patan districts and over 1800 shifted to safer area including around 500 in Patan, over 200 in Kalol and Mansa of Gandhinagar and remaining in Banaskantha district.

He said that the state government was working in co-ordination with center and the PM and PMO are also keeping a close eye on the situation. More teams of NDRF were arriving to participate in rescue and relief work.

Union Minister Hari Chaudhary, Gujarat Ministers Shanker Choudhary, Keshaji Chauhan and Dilip Thakor were camping in the flood effected districts. Senior IAS Harit Shukla has also been send to coordinate with collectors for the relief and rescue operation in which Air Force, Army were also involved.

He said that various areas in most affected Banaskantha and Patan districts have seen 3 to 14 inches of rain in last 24 hours with Dantiwada topping the table at 342 mm. Owing to inflow from Rajasthan the Sipu and Dantiwada dam were almost full so whatever amount of inflow being received was immediately discharged which was resulting in flooding of low lying areas.

Rupani said that additional 3 teams of NDRF and a column of army from Dhangadhra has been sent to affected areas. Senior IAS officers J P Datta and Navin Upadhyay were overseeing the operation regarding distribution of relief materials including food packets to the affected people.

Meanwhile Rupani is likely to move to the Banaskantha to oversee the relief and rescue operation from the ground zero.

DeshGujarat