The paper said 65,130 people were killed in 3,175 incidents of floods. Some 40,358 people died in 117 tropical cyclones, with 344.9 deaths per mortality event. There were 706 heat wave incidents that claimed the lives of 17,362 people, the paper said, adding there is a rise in the number of casualties because of this type of EWE.
Biharis can confidently decide whether they want to follow Badlav Se Bhadiya Bharosa (Trust is Better than Change) or Badaliye Sarkar, Badaliye Bihar (Change the Government, Change Bihar), asserts Asmita Bihari.
The Ashokan Pillar in Kolhua, Bihar, is one of India's best maintained historical sites.
Rajendra Nagar, a planned colony built after Independence, is the worst-affected area in the Bihar capital, seeing an unprecedented flooding which residents said has "exposed the under-preparedness of the corporation".
In Uttar Pradesh, the death toll due to lightning strikes rose to 42.
Participating in a video conference along with chief ministers of other states, Kumar spoke about many states having arranged for return of students from the Rajasthan town, and also made an oblique reference to the pressure from opposition parties that his government has been facing on the issue.
Critics say that there's no 'Modi wave' in four Muslim-dominated parliamentary constituencies in Bihar's Seemanchal belt, but Bharatiya Janata Party leaders are hopeful to retain three out of the four seats here. In 2009 general elections, the BJP won in Purnea, Katihar and Araria but lost in Kishanganj.
Student bodies like the Left-affiliated All India Students' Association and the Congress-affiliated National Students' Union of India have been raising the issue and have demanded the postponement of the two exams.
The Bal Puraskar was conferred by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who gave digital certificates to the awardees using blockchain technology developed by IIT Kanpur.
In another dig at Kumar for joining hands with the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Lalu Prasad, Modi reeled out Bihar police crime figure to claim "Jungle raj has begun to knock Bihar."
'Nehru wanted to strengthen industries by exploiting agriculture and that policy was continued by successive governments.'
More than 1,600 people died due to extreme weather conditions across the country last year, with severe heat wave claiming the largest chunk of the total deaths at 40 per cent, followed by flooding and lightning.
"I will have to remove the mask of chief minister to respond to politics. I don't speak doesn't mean I don't have answers," Thackeray said.
The government on Monday said so far there is no rise in the water level of river Kosi and there is no imminent danger but all precautionary measures are in place to deal with any eventuality.
'We have finished that fear.'
Deficient rains in west, flooding in north play havoc with crop cycles.
Here's a recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.
"If the current Chief Minister again wins this election by mistake then our state will lose. Our state will again stand on the verge of getting ruined. "I wonder how he promotes casteism. It is not appropriate to imagine the development of Bihar under the leadership of a person who promotes communalism," Paswan said while launching the party's manifesto for the Bihar assembly polls.
'Nitish's claims of development are false. He has only helped corrupt officials.' 'I want to remind Lalu that this is not the 1990s. This is 2015.' 'I am a bahubali for those looting society.'
'Maybe the BJP believes, in the post-poll scenario, it will have the might to foist, anybody endorsed by the RSS, upon Bihar,' observes Mohammad Sajjad.
Bihar has asked for forces to deal with the growing Naxal problem.
A reception often reserved for rockstars came the way of mining mogul Anil Agarwal when he started revealing nuggets of his ascent from a scrap-metal dealer to one of India's most prominent self-made industrialists on social media. And now he has been flooded with booking writing proposals and has even been offered money for a biopic. In February this year, Agarwal, 68, started tweeting his journey from Bihar to Mumbai first and then to London to head a globally diversified natural resources company with interests in zinc-lead-silver, iron ore, steel, copper, aluminium, power, oil and gas.
As Chhath Puja draws to a close tomorrow, we bring you some pics of the festival.
Up in the Sky, Helicopter Stories takes us through the exotic and even charming world that Nitin Sathe has lived as an Indian Air Force pilot, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
The employers, many of whom had virtually abandoned the migrant labourers, are sending them train and even flight tickets to fetch them back as factories whir back to life, construction activities pick up and the sowing season sets in.
Central officials said despite many enquiries by the ministry about the condition of the embankments, the state government kept silent. It did not bother to inform the ministry even when the embankments gave way, they said. In fact, the Bihar water resources department's daily newsletter said a day before the breach that the embankments were standing strong, officials said.
In a year when the country produced record coal, rains hit movement of the fuel from mines to power generation units, impacting power generation in many states, including Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi and Tamil Nadu.
'The last time we had such a late withdrawal of monsoon was in 1960 or so.'
A recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.
The report Kosi Deluge: The Worst Is Still To Come is an assessment of why the river remains an enigma and why manmade interventions have turned it into `the sorrow of Bihar'.
'When incidents of stone pelting at the aircraft occurred, the boys were careful that they continued with the rescue because finally we had to save lives.' A senior Indian Air Force officer, who is a veteran of flood rescue ops in Uttarakhand, Bihar, Gujarat and the Bombay deluge, tells Archana Masih/Rediff.com about the rescue operations in Kashmir, one of the first such efforts in a densely populated and urban area.
Raut's remarks came in the wake of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray being recently targeted by the opposition for not moving out of his house during the pandemic. Talking to reporters in Mumbai, Raut said Thackeray has given directives to ensure that Fadnavis, who is leader of opposition in the state Assembly, gets the best treatment.
Over 40 people died in rain-related incidents, majority of them in Uttar Pradesh, while incessant rainfall in Bihar left the streets of state capital Patna and other areas waterlogged and residences of at least two ministers marooned.
Modi praised Kumar for his "commitment" to state's development.
'I realised that if we don't get relief from the government, I'll be faced with the prospect of either starving in Delhi, or starving in my village.'
The Janata Dal-United president was, however, dismissive of any such suggestion and told reporters after the meeting that "too much was being read into" the meeting which, he insisted, was a usual interaction between the prime minister and a chief minister.
The 2020 assembly polls marked the coming of age of a politician who valiantly went down fighting an army of battle-hardened veterans.
The new records for extreme lightning bursts, or 'megaflashes', during 2019, are more than double the size and duration of the previous record flashes.
