Chandigarh: Even as the rains receded in Punjab and Haryana on Tuesday, the government agencies of the two states stepped up rescue and relief work.
The official agencies of the two governments also came out with their interim reports about the damage caused by the heavy rains over the past four days.
Reports coming from Punjab claim that at least 10 people had died and 20 houses were reported to have collapsed, a number of cattle-heads had perished besides many roads which were badly damaged or completely washed away due to the heavy rains.
Stating that the government agencies had stepped up the rescue and relief work, Punjab government officials said that the total value of the damage caused by the torrential rains in the state was yet to be ascertained. They however said that the 10 deaths reported so far were two each in Ropar, Nawanshahr, Hoshiarpur, Fatehgarh Sahib and one each in Moga and Jalandhar.
According to official information, besides the Army and NDRF teams, two units of the state disaster relief force had also been deployed to carry out rescue work in several affected areas.
Meanwhile, the Punjab government announced Rs 4 lakh each to the families of these victims and Rs 37,500 for loss of milch cattle and Rs 4,000 for loss of goats.
The officials also said that the chief minister Bhagwant Mann had also announced a special survey of the damage to the crops and that the government agencies had rescued more than 1,400 people from Ropar and over 100 in Patiala.
Meanwhile, as the weather got clear on Tuesday, the government agencies stepped up the relief and rescue work in Ropar, Patiala and Mohali in Punjab and Ambala and Panchkula in Haryana.
7 deaths in Haryana
Meanwhile, according to an interim report issued by the Haryana government, at least seven deaths had been reported from different parts of Haryana. While four houses were reported to have been damaged and five cows affected, over 59,000 hectares in 239 villages was also reported till Tuesday.
Work in progress to clear Chandigarh-Shimla, Manali highways
Meanwhile, work to restore traffic on the Chandigarh-Shimla as well as on the Chandigarh-Manali national highways which were hit by landslides was still on.
Same was the case with the national highway linking Pinjore (Haryana) and Baddi (Himachal Pradesh). The rail traffic on the Kalka (Haryana)-Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), a world heritage site- was still shut due to mudslides on the tracks after the torrential rains in the region.
