Guwahati: City landslides claim five lives; administration’s apathy continues

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: Incessant rain in Guwahati does not only cause flash floods hampering normal life but also landslides, which are mainly attributed to illegal hill-cutting and the general apathy of the local administration in checking this menace in the hills in and around Guwahati. Landslides on Friday and Saturday claimed five lives and injured several more.

The almost total paralysis of normal life on Friday due to flooding continued in several places on Saturday, with people stuck in their homes or leaving their residences under water for safer accommodation. The persistent rainfall since the intervening night of Thursday and Friday caused flooding in even places hitherto unaffected by flash floods.

Added to this was the more dangerous element of landslides in the city that claimed a total of five lives. Landslides were reported on Friday from Santipur, Nizarapar and Kharghuli. On Friday night itself, landslides occurred at Sopaidang in Bonda, Datalpara, Pandu and Maligaon. The landslides have led to the death of five persons, until now. One such incident of landslide was also reported from Panikhaiti, which led to earth from the hillside near Panikhaiti rail crossing getting dislodged and falling on the police outpost there.

Of the five persons killed in landslides, ten-year-old Deepjyoti Boro of Datalpara was killed, and his elder sister Tanya Boro was injured and admitted to GMCH. The second is Robin Das of Maligaon, who succumbed to his injuries in a private hospital. In another landslide at Sopaidang in Bonda, Poonam Goswami (35) and her four-year-old daughter Nilakshi Goswami were killed. In the same incident, five-year-old Ranjeeta Boro was also killed.

It is necessary to mention here that an astounding 366 risky spots in Guwahati were identified by the Kamrup (Metro) administration as landslide-prone. According to the survey conducted a few years ago, 77 areas were identified as landslide-prone in the Sunsali area, 30 in the Hengrabari area, 40 in the Noonmati area, 37 in the Kharghuli area, 30 in the Khanapara area, 25 in Kahilipara, 30 in the Narangi area, etc.

Continuing its typical yearly routine this time too, the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) issued a notice to the district administrations to identify landslide-prone areas and take remedial measures. However, no tangible strategy to solve the menace permanently is in sight, although several such areas were identified.

The ASDMA has appealed to the district administration to make provisions for safe shelter for families in the event of landslides. However, the administration has neither shifted the people living in those landslide-prone areas to safer areas nor has it regulated norms against random hill cutting and construction work in hill areas.

It also appealed to the people staying in landslide-prone areas to move to safer areas on their own. The fact, however, remains that nobody wants to move to safer areas, come what may.

According to sources, the reasons behind areas remaining landslide-prone on the hills in and around Guwahati are unregulated human activities, including indiscriminate hill cutting, unauthorized construction and poor drainage systems. What the authorities need to do is to prepare standard guidelines for landslide management and mitigation for the capital city, avoiding any construction work or human settlement in high-risk landslide areas, rehabilitating such people to elsewhere permanently, correcting slopes identified as vulnerable to landslides in advance to avoid any slope failure, etc.

Recently, the Gauhati High Court, while hearing a case related to flash floods in Guwahati, was informed by K.N. Choudhury, the Senior Counsel and Amicus Curiae in the case, that though the state government has taken some measures for restraining hill cutting, as a matter of fact, hill cutting is still going on. It was also submitted by Choudhury that the necessary regulations are very much there, but strict compliance of the regulations is not reflected in the actions of the authorities of the state government.

 Also Read: Assam: Tangible measures to tackle landslides missing

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