Incessant downpour battered several states, including Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka, on Friday, with landslips and floods throwing normal life out of gear.
The pictures and videos of the locals wading through waist deep water in Bawana JJ colony area, waterlogged houses, school and hospital went viral on social media even as teams of engineers from Haryana and Delhi worked on a war footing to plug the breach.
The home minister held a video conference with Chief Ministers of Gujarat and Maharashtra -- Vijay Rupani and Uddhav Thackeray respectively -- and Administrator of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Praful Patel, and assured them all central help in view of the impending cyclone, an official statement said in New Delhi.
A Regional Meteorological Centre bulletin said a cyclonic circulation is now seen over the Comorin area and its neighbourhood, extending up to mid tropospheric levels.
The Congress said the PM has neither found the time nor even had the inclination to visit the state for even a few hours.
An overloaded boat carrying 38 people capsized on Sunday close to the 'Pavitra Sangamam'.
Several persons went missing and are now feared dead after a boat carrying flood victims capsized in the swollen Kosi in Bihar's Madhepura district during a rescue mission on Friday.
National Disaster Response Force teams were rushed from Delhi to the affected areas in both Pithoragarh and Chamoli districts to help in the rescue operations along with along with State Disaster Response Force, Sashastra Seema Bal and Indo-Tibetan Border Police and local agencies, officials said.
Rain-related incidents claimed nine more lives in Gujarat, taking the death toll to 16 in two days, while another 8,500 people were relocated and rescued from flood-affected areas with rains continuing to lash some parts of the state for the fourth consecutive day on Wednesday, officials said.
National Disaster Response Force teams rescued more than 50 passengers including 16 badly trapped from the mangled bogies of Patna-Indore Express which derailed in Kanpur during the wee hours on Sunday.
The IMD director said, the cyclonic storm Tauktae in the Arabian sea is moving away from the Kerala coast and is now approaching the Karnataka coast.
District Magistrate Ravi Kumar on Thursday said that 75 teams have been deployed in Patna to sprinkle bleaching powder and remove animal carcass.
The directives came after he took stock of the situation arising from the massive earthquake at a high-level meeting attended by Ministers Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra and senior officials of National Disaster Response Force and Indian Metereological Department.
This is the first cyclone in the Bay of Bengal this pre-monsoon season.
Rajasthan's three districts -- Jalore, Sirohi and Barmer -- are reeling under a flood-like situation due to heavy rainfall caused by cyclonic storm Biparjoy, an official said on Sunday.
A helicopter carrying pilgrims from Guptkashi to Kedarnath crashed on Tuesday amid poor visibility and seven people on board are feared dead.
Tirumala, the abode of Lord Venkateswara, was caught in a massive flood of unprecedented scale on Thursday, leaving hundreds of pilgrims stranded even as a heavy downpour under the influence of a depression in Bay of Bengal battered the temple-town Tirupati and many parts of Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh.
Tracing the remaining persons was proving a daunting task as the river remained in spate with over two lakh cusecs of floodwater gushing, sources said.
Sujith Wilson had fallen into the disused farm borewell while playing near his house in Nadukattupatti on Friday evening, and various central and state agencies were called in to rescue him.
The National Disaster Response Force on Friday intensified its relief and rescue operations in the rain and flood-battered Chennai and its adjoining areas as it added 20 more teams for the job and rescued over 10,000 people till now.
The number of those rescued has gone up to 25, with five more persons being pulled alive out from the debris since Monday night, police said. The dead include 11 children, aged between two to 15 years, an official said.
The flooding in Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra has left people without homes and brought about destruction worth crores.
A major fire broke out inside the industrial area of Dombivli in Thane after a boiler exploded at the plant of a chemical company.
'You are talking as if Patna has been the only place which has suffered on account of heavy rain. What happened in Mumbai and America when these places were battered by similar downpour?'
A multi-agency operation to rescue an estimated 34 people trapped inside a big tunnel at Tapovan was carried out overnight after a glacier burst-triggered deluge killed 10 people in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district while over 140 are missing, officials said on Monday.
Officials in districts bordering Maharashtra have been asked to maintain contact with their counterparts there regarding the release of water from dams, following reports of heavy rains in the neighboring states.
According to the Jyotirmath administration, these cracks have increased in the last 15 days.
The building, located in Pragati Nagar area of the town in Kheda district, collapsed late on Friday night, Kheda Superintendent of Police Divya Mishra said.
Nearly 86 lakh people in the state's 32 districts have been affected by heavy rain and subsequent floods this year, bringing life to a screeching halt in many parts.
Officials said 13 more families living in houses with huge cracks were moved by the administration to safe locations on Sunday.
In the last 24 hours, eight people have died after drowning in flood waters -- two each in Barpeta and Karimganj districts, one each in Darrang, Hailakandi, Nalbari and Sonitpur districts and eight people are still missing.
The 41 workers trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel for the last 11 days are likely to be rescued in the next few hours or by tomorrow, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) member Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain said on Thursday evening.
As the low-pressure area in the south-eastern Arabian Sea intensified into a severe depression on Friday, heavy rains lashed many parts of Kerala and huge tidal waves started hitting low-lying coastal areas.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were roped in to rescue hundreds of stranded people, they said.
Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang, better known as P S Golay, on Friday said that the Himalayan state has incurred damages worth thousands of crores of rupees in the flash flood.
The Indian Army has been called for rescue operation and four people have been rescued till now.
Turkish-origin people living in India are trying to stay calm despite knowing that their home country would take several years to overcome the devastation.
The spokesperson said a total of 3 National Disaster Response Force teams and those from the Army, state police and local administration are working at the Tupul yard railway construction camp of the Territorial Army.
Of some 70 villages in the coastal area of Gujarat's Kutch district, people of Salaya are the last to shift to safe shelters in the face of the approaching cyclone Biparjoy.
A defence spokesperson said that nine persons were stranded on the terrace of a building close to the Ulhas river near Kalyan.
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