Children stand outside their flooded house in Manikchak in Malda on Monday. (Surajit Roy)

Malda, Aug. 5: Around 700 families living in villages on unprotected land on the fringe of the Ganga have been affected in the Manikchak area here after the water level of the river rose to the danger level.

The level of the Ganga has been rising since July 22 and the district administration has not provided any relief, despite repeated requests by the local people. The authorities said they couldn’t assist the affected people as they were busy with the panchayat polls.

“The voting in Malda was on July 22 and then there were repolling and counting on July 29. All officials were tied up with the polls. We are lucky that a major catastrophe did not take place at that time. Now that the polls are over, we are concentrating on providing relief to the flood affected areas,” said a senior official of the district.

Among those affected are 500 families of five villages in the Hiranandanpur gram panchayat in Bhutni island, around 40km from here, and 200 families in the Dharampur gram panchayat in mainland Manikchak, around 35km from here.

Most of the villages affected are surrounded by five feet of water.

According to Gour Mondol, a resident of Hiranandanpur village, all the families have no place to move to because of the apathy of the administration. “The administration is still busy with the panchayat polls. We have no where to go. There are no functional panchayats and we are totally cut off without any relief.”

“The administration tried to send two large boats to rescue us, but they were too big to get near us. We need smaller boats to venture out,” said a Jolpatta resident.

According to Sangey Dukpa, the block development officer of Manikchak, two large boats were sent on the instruction of local MLA and women and child development minister, Sabitri Mitra.

“We had sent two large boats that could carry about 100 persons each. However, the affected people want smaller boats. We are drawing up a list of the affected families so that we can despatch relief. We had to face some problems because of the panchayat polls. The polls are over and there should be no problems now,” the block development officer said.

According to the BDO, once the list of the affected people is completed, relief would be sent to them. “We will complete the list by tomorrow and start sending tarpaulin sheets, dry food and packaged water to the affected areas.”

The irrigation department has issued an alert along the unprotected areas in Manikchak near the Ganga. According to the engineers, the rate at which the Ganga is rising, it can be said the river could cross the extreme danger level in the next 48 hours.

“Today, the level of the Ganga was 25.12m. It was flowing at 25.04m on Sunday. The extreme danger level is 25.3m. Some of the low-lying and unprotected areas in Bhutni and Manikchak have been waterlogged,” said Amaresh Kumar Singh, the executive engineer of the irrigation department.

“We have created a 2km- long embankment along the Bhutni stretch. However, at present, the water of the river is threatening the embankment which is five metres in height. There is a danger of it getting breached,” he said.