It was seventh consecutive day of heavy rains in Hyderabad as the downpour brought the city to a grinding halt once again.
The rain, which resumed after a brief lull since Thursday evening, turned the roads and the traffic junctions into pools of water and created a lot of difficulties for the evening rush hour traffic. There were traffic snarls in Banjara Hills, lakdi Ka Pul, Madhapur, Miyapur Punjgagutta, Begumpet, Nampally, Moazzam Jahi Market, Secunderabad and many other busy areas of the city.
The Met office in Hyderabad said that the low pressure area in the Bay of Bengal was the cause of extensive rains over Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and more rains were likely over the next 24 hours. There will be isolated to heavy rainfall over coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema and Telangana over the next 24 hours, the officials of the Meteorological Centre in Hyderabad said.
Apart from the traffic jams and damage to the road connectivity the people of the two Telugu states were also suffering the seasonal diseases including Chikungunya, Dengue fever and brain fever or Japanese encephalitis with deadly fall out.
Two minor children Mohammed Idrees and Mohammed Junaid died in Ananthapur town of Andhra Pradesh due to the dengue fever on Friday. State minister Palle Raghunath Reddy visited their home in Vinayak Nagar area and expressed his condolences. The family which had lost both the sons was in deep shock. The minster also held a review meeting with the officials and ordered launch of sanitation and fumigation drive in the area. In Hyderabd a promising cricketer also died due to Dengue fever. Sainath, who played for the Under 19 team of Hyderabad cricketer association, was suffering from Dengue for the last three days and breathed his last today.
The continuing heavy rains have brought fresh inflows in to the major irrigation projects. Sriram Sagar project in Nizamabad across river Godavari was receiving 22000 cusecs water while the Srisailam project across Krishna river was receiving 86000 cusecs of water.
Though the monsoon season was about to end most of the big dams in both the Telugu States had not even reached half of their capacity.