Tormented by the rains for the past six days, Calcuttans longed for the sun on Sunday morning, but were greeted with grey skies. The wet weather did not let up through the day.

Over 100,000 people are marooned in different parts of the city, including the 2,500 in the relief camps in Behala.

A portion of the hawkers? corner on Galiff Street, where sweepers of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) had been staying, collapsed on Sunday morning, prompting immediate evacuation.

The civic body also sealed about 50 roadside taps, suspecting contamination of drinking water.

The three major hospitals in the city ? SSKM, Medical College and Hospital (MCH) and RG Kar ? remained inundated. At SSKM and RG Kar, only critical patients were provided with stretchers. Others had to wade through knee-deep water to reach the emergency ward.

At MCH, water seeped into the autoclave machines, used to disinfect surgical instruments, rendering them useless.

Diets of the patients threatened to go haywire, with the spiralling cost of vegetables sending the budgets of the kitchen contractors for a toss.

Availability of items also proved a problem, with shops remaining closed in several areas of the city. Residents of Maniktala, Shyambazar, Bagbazar, Jorabagan and Entally were seen queuing up in front of grocery shops.

?We have asked the kitchen contractors not to compromise on the quality of the meals for patients, though there is a dearth of vegetables in the market,? said A.N. Biswas, MCH deputy superintendent.

There was waist-deep water in the compound of the Panihati state general hospital in Sodepur. The outdoor units were flooded and, hence, closed.

?We may have to shift the 50 patients if the water level increases,? stated K. Adhikary, chief medical officer of health, North 24-Parganas.

Municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay pulled up engineers of the CMC?s drainage and sewerage department for ignoring the waterlogging problem.

?You are repeating the old claim that Calcutta is flooded whenever there is rainfall of over 10 mm an hour. The showers over the past four or five days have been of 3.5 mm per hour on an average,? Bandyopadhyay told the engineers during a meeting on Sunday.