People wade through water to a safer place after the 2008 Kosi flood. Telegraph picture

Patna, April 27: The state water resources department has directed its field officials, responsible for undertaking precautionary steps to avoid repetition of the 2008 Kosi disaster, to hold parleys with their Nepal counterparts to clear doubts on the ongoing work for digging a 10-km-long pilot channel in Kosi.

The directive has been issued after Nepal officials stopped the work being carried out by the state government for constructing the pilot channel.

“Our officials have already discussed the issue with their Nepal counterparts and the matter would be sorted out in a day or two,” Bihar water resources department minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary told The Telegraph today, before adding that there was a confusion on the Nepal side that digging the pilot channel would lead the Kosi water to flow to the Nepal side of the river embankment.

The state government has opted for digging the pilot channel in the middle of Kosi to keep the flow of water centralised. As the river water carries a lot of silt, it generally gets deposited in the middle of the river, which in turn, gives birth to meandering tendency and water pressure increases on the embankment of the river.

Something similar had happened in August 2008, when the pressure of river water on the eastern embankment led to breach near Kusaha in Nepal, which resulted in a devastating flood, affecting lives of about two million people.

Realising the magnitude of devastation and the threat by the meandering tendency of Kosi, the state government had set up a Kosi breach closure committee under the chairmanship of Nilendu Sanyal, a nationally acclaimed expert on irrigation projects and former chairman of Ganga Flood Control Commission. It was Sanyal who had recommended digging of a pilot channel in the middle course of the river so that the flow of river water could be centralised and pressure on the embankment could be reduced.

From 2009, the state water resources department has been carrying out the digging work of pilot channel before rainy season to avoid a 2008-like situation and the same was being done this year too when Nepal officials suddenly stopped the work.

Apart from Kosi, the water resources department has decided to undertake the de-siltation and dredging work in major rivers of north Bihar, which cause flood almost every year.

“We want to make it a regular exercise for these rivers as the course of these rivers too get affected by siltation, leading to floods,” Choudhary said, before adding that while the said work would be carried out in Gandak this year, a similar exercise would be carried out in other major rivers from next year.

Sharing the details about availability of resources for the work, the minister said while the water resources department had two dredgers at its disposal, it would outsource the work to private agency in case need of it would be felt.

The minister has also chalked out a plan to supervise these works and pay surprise visits to field to assess the ongoing work.