Lalu-RJD ignored threat from Kosi, Nitish tells PM

A day earlier, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who heads a JD(U)-BJP coalition, showed Singh a 2004 satellite image to make the point that his Government cannot be faulted for not taking steps to prevent the flooding — the satellite image, official sources said, clearly showed that the Kosi embankment had come under pressure four years ago at the same place where it breached the barrier on August 18.

The western channel of the Kosi was blocked and the eastern channel was under pressure.

In 2004, Bihar was under RJD rule. Sources said that Nitish Kumar, by presenting the PM with factual data from 2004, was making the point that the river embankment upkeep was either poor or did not receive the attention it should have from the then RJD government.

Sources said Nitish Kumar told the PM that a day before the embankment breached 12.9 km upstream of the Kosi barrage on the Nepalese side, he had urged External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to take up the matter with Kathmandu. Mukherjee got back to him saying that Nepal was preparing for the swearing-in of Prachanda as Prime Minister and there was no authority who could deliver immediately, the sources said.

Rejecting RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s charge of mismanaging the flood situation, Nitish Kumar told the PM that the maintenance of the Kosi embankment was the job of the Ganga Flood Control Commission, set up in 1972, under the Ministry of Water Resources at the Centre.

The chairman of GFCC is also the head of the Kosi High Level Committee. Sources said that Nitish Kumar told Singh that Bihar was only the implementing agency because the Kosi water was a subject of the Indo-Nepal treaty.

There is worry that the Kosi will swell even more by the first week of October. And with repair work possible only in October at Kushaha in Nepal, the place where the breach occurred, the threat levels will only rise. An estimated Rs 950 crore will be required to plug the breach and repair the Kosi embankment.