New course: Bird’s eye view of the 2008 Kosi deluge

Patna, June 9: A two-day meeting to find out a “technical solution” to shift the river Kosi to the middle of the eastern and western embankments in downstream of the Bhimnagar barrage (Nepal) began at Kathmandu today with the senior engineers and experts from both the sides deliberating in it.

“The agenda of the meeting is to ensure that the flow of the Kosi river is brought to the centre so as not to threaten either the eastern or western embankment,” the principal secretary of the water resources department, Afzal Amanullah, told The Telegraph, adding the conclusion of the meeting would be known by tomorrow night.

The experts on the Bihar side perceive the Nepal agreeing to hold the meeting over the vexed issue as some sort of headway in the direction of resuming work of digging the pilot channels downstream at the 57-gate Bhimnagar Barrage and eventually shifting its course in the middle.

The river has shifted eastward, threatening the eastern embankment, which it had breached in 2008, causing unprecedented floods.

The local people supported by Nepali Maoists had stopped the pilot channel dredging work in downstream of the barrage in early May, fearing that the shifting of the river’s course would increase the pressure on the western embankment, causing flood in the Nepal areas. Later, the Nepal government, too, officially stopped it.

What shocked the Bihar chief minister and experts manning the Bhimnagar barrage (Indian asset to control the Kosi’s flow in Nepal) is that neither the Nepal government nor its people showed any opposition to India digging the pilot channels in the upstream of the river. But the moment the pilot channel work began in the downstream of the barrage, armed Maoists and local people chased the engineers and workers out from the sites.

Anxious at the development, chief minister Nitish Kumar met the external affairs minister, S.M. Krishna, on May 18 and followed it up through a letter in the last week of the May, requesting the latter to make Nepal have a dialogue with the experts from India and resume the pilot channel digging work.

Sources said on the directives of Krishna, the Indian embassy in Nepal took up the issue with the authorities of the Himalayan Republic. “The beginning of the dialogue on the vexed issue is the outcome of the Nitish and Krishna’s endeavours,” a source said.

Meanwhile, the state water resources minister, Vijay Kumar Choudhary, directed the engineers concerned at a meeting here to complete the flood prevention work on the north Bihar rivers by June 15 and maintain “round the clock” vigil on the embankments in Bihar with the monsoon about to hit the state soon.