Imphal, July 03: Even as the water levels of Imphal and Nambul river receded today giving respite to residents in the city, the water from Nambul river has caused overflowing of the Chandranadi river on the southern side and has inundated around 400 Paris of cultivated land at Chajing Loukon.

Residents of the area said that Chajing Loukon consists of around 600 Paris of fields owned by farmers from Haoreibi, Chajing and Chajing Karam.

The flood water has submerged around 400 paris of cultivated land including around 20 Paris for the first crop.

However, the remaining 200 paris will also be flooded if the overflow of water is not checked immediately, they said.

The farmers expressed concern that the first crop will fail this year as the water will take more than 10 days to recede.

They lamented that Government authorities had been time and again requested to construct ring bund of the southern side of Chandranadi river to check the overflow since a long time.

However no action was forthcoming from the Government side except the visits by the then Chief Minister W Nipamahca Singh in 1999 and the then IFC Minister and the former Speaker H Babudhon Singh who promised to look into the matter, they said.

They said that as the Government failed to look into the matter, farmers and residents decided to take up the work on their own and sought financial and manpower assistance from the Citizens Volunteers Training Centre (CVTC), an NGO.

The work of putting up ring bund was started in February this year.

However it could not be completed due to several constraints and only the worse hit areas were taken up.

The present situation could have been worse if the preventive steps were not taken up, they added.

The inundation of the fields had occurred on two occasions in the current year alone.

Stating that the recent flood is the worse during the past few years, the residents further said that more than 60 paris of cultivated crop were destroyed earlier.

They said the frequent flooding also took place as the outlet valve of the culvert having a radius of four feet located at Hiyangthang Pallak, which is the confluence of Nambul and Chandranadi river, has not been functioning properly.

Around 10 paris of fields have also been submerged in the areas surrounding the culvert, they said.

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