Monsoon fury continues ; thousands rendered homeless

New Delhi, Aug 10 (UNI) With the monsoon fury continuing in many parts of the country, the flood situation in Bihar, Karnataka Gujarat, and Arunachal Pradesh remained grim rendering thousands homeless and destroying property worth crores.

In Bihar the overall flood situation continued to remain gloomy as all of the major rivers were flowing above the danger level.

According to an official report of the Disaster Management department, the toll in the flood fury touched 126 in the state.

Meanwhile, reports from different district revealed that over 5000 villages remained inundated and about 1.5 crore people were A grim flood situation starked the Cauvery and Krishna river basins in Karnataka as the renewed Southwest monsoon left a trail of devastation with 242 people killed and property worth Rs 4,000 crore damaged forcing the State Government to seek an immeidate relief of Rs 500 crore from the Centre.

At least 191 houses have been damaged by a serial landslides triggered by heavy rains at Mago and Thingbu areas of Arunahal Pradesh's Tawang district during the last couple of days.

Official sources said the road communication also badly affected as many bridges and culverts were also damaged in the massive landslips, that killed four members of a family in the district on Wednesday.

After two days of pleasant weather, hot and humid conditions returned to Delhi with the mercury rising to 37 degrees Celsius, three degrees above normal.

In Rajasthan, the rains have somewhat receded. Meanwhile, water is being continuously discharged to maintain the water level in the Mahi Bajaj Sagar dam in Banswara district.

The flood situation continued to improve in Uttar Pradesh with only scanty rainfall being recorded since last week.

According to reports from Gorakhpur division, water-borne diseases have started gripping Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur and Deoria districts.

Almost 300 villages are adversely affected due to flood in the division.

Latest satellite imageries and synoptic observations have indicated that a fresh low pressure area has formed over north west Bay of Bengal off the Orissa, West Bengal coast.

Torrential rains caused by the deep depression virtually paralysed life in coastal Orissa for two days and wreaked havoc in Cuttack city which remained submerged under rain water for three days.

Meanwhile, a delegation of Communist Party of India (CPI) MPs, led by senior party leader Gurudas Dasgupta, today called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and requested him to send immediate aid to flood-ravaged Bihar.

The met department has warned that under its impact rain and thundershower were likely to occur at many places over coastal Orissa and a few places over interior Orissa during the next 24 hours.

Rain or thundershowers are likely to occur at many places in Gangetic West Bengal, Gujarat, Konkan and Goa, Lakshadweep and a few places in Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Sub-Himalayan, west Bengal and Sikkim, Jharkhand, Bihar, east Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Chattisgarh, Madhya Maharashtra, coastal Andhra Pradesh and north interior Karntaka and at isolated places in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Haryana, Punjab, Himalchal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, West Madhya Pradesh, Marathwada, Telangana, Rayalseema and Tamil Nadu.

UNI