The continuing moonsonal floods across large tracts of Haryana and southern Punjab have already cost 51 human lives apart from hundreds of crores in the large scale devastation to the canal network, rural roads and thousands of acres sown with summer paddy.
Even as flood waters posed fresh threats to dozens of villages (9,000 acres) in the southern Punjab district of Mansa and new breaches in the Ghaggar river embankment were reported from Panchkula district in Haryana, an official Haryana administration news release confirmed that 26 people had perished across Ambala, Kurukshetra, Fatehabad and Sirsa.
In Punjab, two more people were reported to have been washed away and drowned by the swollen Ghaggar river taking the state’s human death toll up to 25.
Army and National Disaster Relief Force personnel are assisting both state governments in the worst affected districts with flood waters showing no sign of receding any time soon. Officials said more than 5.25 lakh acres of agricultural farmland have been seriously affected because of inundation.
The administrations in both of India’s premier food grain producing states are now additionally grappling with the looming threat of water-borne epidemics. Health teams have been distributing water-purification tablets, oral rehydration kits and other essential medical supplies besides carrying out fogging operations to preempt malaria or dengue fever outbreaks.
Efforts are also underway to provide fodder and medicines for farm animals many of which have already perished in the calamity.