New Delhi: With the recovery of three more bodies on Monday, the death toll from cyclone Titli and the subsequent flood in Odisha has risen to 27 . The three bodies were found in the worst hit Raigada block of Gajapati district, officials said.
“In the landslide incident in Raigada block, 18 people have died. Postmortem of bodies has been conducted,” said chief secretary A.P. Padhi, who visited Gajapati district to review the situation.
On his return from Gajapati, Padhi attended a review meeting chaired by chief minister Naveen Patnaik where it was decided that the Odisha government would distribute 50 kg of rice, 2.5 litres of kerosene oil and Rs 1,000 in cash to each affected family in the district.
Claiming that the situation has improved in many parts of the state, including in Gajapati and Ganjam districts, Padhi said the food distribution work will begin from Tuesday. He also claimed that road communication has been restored in many parts of the affected districts. Power to all the block headquarters of Gajapati is expected to be restored by Tuesday evening.
According to Padhi, the calamities have hit 16 of the 30 districts of the state. The affected districts were: Gajapati, Ganjam, Rayagada, Puri, Kandhamal, Kendrapada, Keonjhar, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Khorda, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Nayagarh, Balasore, Mayurbhanj and Angul. Polythene sheets are being given to those families whose houses were damaged in the cyclone and flood. There has also been extensive damage to paddy and other crops in the Gajapati, Ganjam and Rayagada districts.
Though a total of 3,60,353 people were evacuated and sheltered in 1,614 relief centres, most of them returned to their houses by Monday evening and only 8,889 people are left in 41 relief centres, the officials said.
Opposition political parties, including BJP, Congress and CPI(M) claimed that the state government has been hiding the actual figure of casualties.
“Till yesterday, the Naveen Patnaik-government was not ready to accept any deaths when 20 post-mortems had already been done in Gajapati district alone. The government is lying and to hide that, it is lying even more. We have names of 25 deceased so far and are collecting other names, once we get all the names, we will reveal it in front of media,” said Odisha BJP general secretary Bhrugu Baxipatra.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said: “Our state party has information regarding more deaths than the state government’s figure.”
CPI(M) state secretary Alikishore Patnaik claimed that at least 40 people have perished in the calamities.