LAW KUMAR MISHRA
PATNA: After over 14 days,the state capital became free from water logging thanks to the herculean efforts by the men and machines from Gevra coal mines in Chhattisgharh.They worked for 23 hours daily ,one hour left for service of the high power pumps to drain out water at the rate of 1500 gallons per minute.In last two weeks,the accumulated water had turned black and the liberated people said”We are from Kaala Pani” thanks to the fitters,mechanics and foremen from Gevra mines.
The five pumps from Gevra had reached here on September 27 evening following instructions from the Cabinet secretary,Rajiv Gauva.Union law,justice and IT minister,Ravishankar Prasad,who represents Patna Saheb,the worst affected area of Bihar contacted Gauva,his junior in Patna University and sought assistance to free Patna fromw ater logging as the 32 pumpins sets of Patna Municipal Corporation were out of order.
Within 24 hours,the pumps with mechanics,fitters and foremen reached Patna and were put on operation at saidpur Nalla,Bahadurpur,Pahadi areas.Two were installed at Saidpur to drain out water from Rajendranagar,where the deouty chief minister,DSushil Kumar Modi,five judges of Patna High Court,families of top bureaucrats of the country were stranded as water was flowing 6 to ten feet on roads.Entire ground floor in these areas were under water.
Makarandhwaj Banzara,head foreman from Gevra coal mines told this paper”We missed Durga Puja in our rfamily ,but worked hard to ensure some relief to the residents of Patna to celebrate the festival”.He said the machines were operated for 23 hours daily and workers worked in three shifts of eight hours each.No arrangement was made by the state government authorities for their accommodation,food or transport.The Coal India Limioted arranged everything,including diesel,gas cutters and spare parts which were brought from Kolkata and Dhanbad..One of the HP pumps developed problem as the garbage in one of the drainage pipelines choked the rotter of the machine and damaged it.Engineers who reached from Bilaspur refsued to repair and decided to send the machine back to Bilaspur.
Foremen Mulridhar rathod,R S Devangan,,Fitters-Sunny Ram,Manoj Singh,Ram Sai and Lakhan lal and mechanic Alok Mishra,mechanic who came from Gevra said they had sleepless nights in the first few days as the water level was ten feet in certain areas and faced difficultiues in installing the machines.One of the machines were inbstalled on sand bags at Saidpur on the instructions of of one of the secretaries to the chief minister,S Sidharth,a asdnior IAS.Machine collapsed as the sand bags could not bear the burden of the heavy machine.”We are deeply concerned about the problems of the people who were not even able to come to the balconies as the entire Moinul Haq stadium was under ten feet water.We waded throuh and started operations”,said Devangan. According to the fitters and mechanics,they were working on a civil project for the first time and did not come out of the coal mines project in the past.The volume of water discharged may cross ten crores gallons,they said. Gevra is the largest open cast coial mine in Asia and world’s second largest with capacity of 35 million tonnes per annum..On a single day in March 2007,it produced one lakh tonnes of coal. Some of the mechanics,fitters,foremen from Gevra who proved to be saviours of Patnaites returned from the capital on Thursday for Gevra town in Chhattisgarh on heavy vehicles\.MUkesh Kumar Gupta alias Munnaji,who came fromBilaspur said”I was getting franctic calls from my wife.She was angry -for the first time since our marriage I was not present during Durga Puja”.Now,I feel relieved.He said two operators are still working at Saidpur Nallah and Rupaspur on both eastern and western Patna even now.