Ganga tops its 2016 record at Gandhi Ghat as Bihar floods pass 19 lakh people

The Ganga at Gandhi Ghat in Patna was flowing at 50.57 metres at 6 a.m. on 6 September. That is 0.05 metres above the previous highest flood level of 50.52 metres, recorded on 21 August 2016. At Dighaghat in the same city the river stood 1.54 metres above the danger mark. At Gandhi Ghat the excess over danger level was 1.96 metres.

By late Sunday a later gauge at 11:15 p.m. showed Gandhi Ghat easing to 50.47 metres, just under the old record and marked as falling. Hathidah, the next station of concern, was at 43.62 metres against an HFL of 43.52 metres and described as steady. Water Resources Department officials had warned that Hathidah and stations below it could take the pulse of the Gandhi Ghat peak over one to three days, and that Hathidah might beat its own record.

How many people are in the water

The Disaster Management Department’s first Sunday briefing counted about 19.57 lakh people in 330 gram panchayats across 66 blocks in 11 districts: Patna, Bhojpur, Saran, Vaishali, Bhagalpur, Begusarai, Buxar, Samastipur, Munger, Katihar and Arwal, with some lists substituting Araria. A later official update used by India Today and the Indian Express raised the figure to 22.42 lakh people in 12 districts after adding Lakhisarai and aligning Arwal, spread across 70 blocks and 368 gram panchayats. The earlier snapshot, before the latest rise, had been 16.85 lakh people in 61 blocks and 300 panchayats. The count is still moving with the river.

RJD national working president Tejashwi Yadav wrote that livestock had been swept away, public infrastructure damaged and property worth thousands of crores lost. He asked for the floods to be declared a national disaster.

What the state has put on the water

Ten NDRF teams and 27 SDRF teams were deployed across the affected districts. Officials said 1,345 boats were in service for evacuation and local movement, with instructions to stop overloading. Community kitchens rose from 80 to 190 in a single day on the Express account; an earlier PTI note had put the kitchen count at 110. Boat ambulances were part of the medical plan in inundated pockets.

The Water Resources Department ordered tighter watches on Ganga embankments in Begusarai, Lakhisarai, Munger, Bhagalpur and Katihar. Engineers were told to keep flood-control plant ready and to walk the vulnerable reaches. At Valmikinagar barrage the Gandak was discharging 1,29,000 cusecs and the trend was called stable. At Buxar the Ganga was 0.08 metres above danger and falling. At Pandarak it was 43.92 metres, 0.19 metres above its previous HFL of 43.73 metres from 16 August.

Why this crest is not only a Patna story

Bihar had received 69.1 millimetres of rain in September by Sunday, 55 percent above normal for the period, with heavy rain also reported in neighbouring Jharkhand. The Ganga at Patna is a funnel for that water plus whatever the Gandak and other north-bank rivers send downstream. When Gandhi Ghat sets a new high, the districts east of Patna get the delayed wave. That is why the alert list runs through Begusarai to Katihar rather than stopping at the capital ghats.

A house standing half in the river at Nakta Diyara, photographed on 5 September, is the local picture of a gauge that most readers outside Bihar never see. The number that will decide the next 72 hours is Hathidah. If that station keeps rising past 43.62 metres, the kitchen and boat counts will rise with it. If Gandhi Ghat’s late-Sunday fall holds, the crest is already moving east and the work shifts from Patna’s riverfront to the embankments downstream.