Central team continues visit to flood-hit districts of Andhra Pradesh

The team will visit NTR and Guntur districts on Thursday to assess the damages caused by recent heavy rains and floods

Vijayawada: The Inter-Ministerial Central Team continued its visit to flood-affected districts of Andhra Pradesh for the second day on Thursday.

The team will visit NTR and Guntur districts on Thursday to assess the damages caused by recent heavy rains and floods. The team will be divided into two groups to visit the affected areas in the two districts. On the first day of their two-day visit to the state on Wednesday, the team visited Krishna and Bapatla districts.

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Krishna District Collector DK Balaji briefed them on the damages caused by heavy rains and floods. The Collector told the team that agriculture and allied sectors, highways, irrigation, electricity and rural water supply departments suffered a loss of Rs 1,200 crore. The team met the Collector and officials of various departments to apprise itself of the losses incurred by various sectors.

This group led by Anil Subrahmanyam, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs also included Rakesh Kumar, Chief Engineer, Union Road, Transport and Highways Ministry, Regional Office, Vijayawada and SVSP Sharma, scientist, National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO, Department of Space.

The Collector, through a PowerPoint presentation, explained the damage caused by the rains and floods. He said heavy rains, massive inflows into Krishna river from upstream, overflowing of Budameru rivulet and breaches resulted in huge losses. The Central team was told that 11.43 lakh cusecs in Krishna river in September 2024 was the highest in history.

The river received 10.94 lakh cusecs in 2009 and 10.61 lakh cusecs in 1903. The Central officials were informed that Budameru, which caused havoc in the neighbouring NTR district, flows to a length of 56 kilometres in Krishna district. The rivulet brought 45,000 cusecs of flood water inundating low-lying areas and crops.

After the meeting, the Central team, along with the District Collector and Machilipatnam MP Vallabhneni Balasowry, saw a photo exhibition on damages by floods. Earlier, the team visited Gudivada constituency in Krishna district to assess the damages. The team members saw the damaged bridge on Budameru and the fish ponds.

It also saw drone visuals of the damaged crops. Before embarking on the visit to affected districts, the six-member team had a meeting with state government officials. The team was informed that as per the preliminary estimate, the state suffered a loss of Rs 6,880 crore.

The officials said that about 10.32 lakh people were affected by floods in 32 wards and 161 village secretariats. The state government opened 246 relief centres and shifted 45,855 people from flood-affected areas.