GUWAHATI, Sept 6 - Of its total geographical area of 78,438 sq km, an area of 31,500 sq km of Assam is flood-prone, as per the assessment made by the Rashtriya Barh Ayog. This is about 39.58 per cent of the State�s land area and about 9.40 per cent of the total flood prone area of the country. Moreover, of the 34 (now 35 with Majuli) districts of the State, 17 are the worst flood-affected districts.
These are the information provided by the Updated Flood Hazard Atlas for Assam State prepared by the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Association with the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA). The Atlas was released at a function here today by Minister of State for Revenue and Disaster Management Pallav Lochan Das.
The worst flood-affected districts include � Morigaon, Dhemaji, Darrang, Sivasagar, Nalbari, Charaideo, Sonitpur, Biswanath, Dhubri, South Salmara, Kamrup, Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Barpeta, Dibrugarh, Golaghat and Hailakandi, the Atlas said.
Of these districts, with 1,45, 341 hectares of land, Barpeta has the largest size of flood inundated area; while with 1,44,780 hectares of land, Lakhimpur district follows it in this respect. Lakhimpur is followed by Nagaon in this respect with a total area of 1,44,289 hectares of its land vulnerable to inundation.
It said that about a maximum of 14.58 lakh hectares of cropped area is under various categories of flood hazard. Out of this, about 1.10 lakh hectares of land falls under very high to high flood hazard zones.
About 28.75 per cent (22.54 lakh hectares) of the land in Assam was affected by flood during 1998-2015. Out of this area, about 1.55 lakh hectares of land falls under high (that is inundated 13-15 times) to very high (inundated 16-18 times) flood hazard categories, said the Atlas.
The Atlas prepared as part of the performance target ASDMA fixed during the initial 100 days of the new Government in the State, has provided precise information on perennially flood-prone villages out of the 26,000 villages of the State and this is going to help the district administrations, Agriculture Department, Panchayat and Rural Development (P&RD) Department, Veterinary and Animal Husbandry (V&AH) Department, Public Health Engineering Department (PHE) for flood preparedness.
While the Agriculture Department can introduce water-logging resistant paddy varieties, crop insurance and cattle insurance, the P&RD can build raised platforms under the MGNREGA, the PHE can raise the levels of the hand pumps and the other departments can also raise the plinths of their departmental buildings, etc., taking the cue from the Atlas.
