With super-cyclonic storm Fani ravaging Odisha coastal belt and appearing in no mood to spare Bengal the State Government went on maximum alert state with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee cancelling her election rallies for the coming 48 hours.
The Chief Minister who was currently camping at Kharagpur some 50 miles from the sea was personally monitoring the situation even as the state administration evacuated several lakh people from the coastal regions.
Tourists had been evacuated from beach joints of Digha, Mandarmani, Shankarpur, Tajpur, Home Ministry sources said adding hotels at the mouth of Bay of Bengal in Bak Khali, Ganga Sagar, Namkhana, Sajne Khali in Sundarbans had been evacuated and local villagers had been shifted to those places.
“Taking lesson from Aila,” that struck Bengal causing extensive damages in 2009 the Government had taken unprecedented measures, a senior official said.
The Chief Minister said “be alert, take care and stay safe for the next two days but don’t panic. I am personally supervising the situation on war footing. All the election-related programmes have been postponed for the next 48 hours.”
In Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim ordered evacuation of people from shanties and hutments. “Several thousand people have been shifted to community halls and roadside shops have been closed,” a senior Kolkata Metropolitan Corporation official said adding.
The “extremely severe” storm is likely fade into a “severe cyclonic depression” by the time it would enter Bengal sometime in the wee hours of Saturday, weather office said advising “chances should not be taken and people should be on maximum alert.”
The State Government had directed owners of ‘The 42’ the tallest building in India to remove the tall crane affixed to it. While the Railways cancelled a number of local trains moving down south to Sunderban regions of Diamond Harbour, Canning, Namkhana causing massive passenger snarl at Sealdah Railway Station. “Trains are being run sparingly considering the entry time of the storm,” an Eastern Railway official said. Flights out of Netaji Subhas International Airport had also been suspended for several hours till Saturday causing great inconvenience to the North-East bound passengers sources said.
“Our flights have been cancelled and we are stranded in Kolkata without any boarding facility being provided by the airline authorities,” said a Rakesh Sinharoy a passenger appealing to the authorities to make arrangements for the trapped passengers. Meanwhile, the with electoral code of conduct lifted from the affected zones political parties found a great opportunity of do pre-electoral service to the masses even as many of them jumped into action as hordes of mini trucks loaded with activists and relief materials rushed coastwards.
“Had there been election every month then the Government and the politicians would have worked with such alacrity making India a truly shinning nation,” said Apurbanath Chatterjee a professor in a college in South 24 Parganas. Similar scenes were witnessed in relief camps (mainly community halls) in Kolkata where the inmates were being served with all kind of necessities from tea, breakfast to non-vegetarian dinners, sources said.