Bhubaneswar:
Though the flood situation substantially improved in the Mahanadi river system, over two lakh people in 209 villages remained marooned while the death toll mounted to 46 in Odisha on Tuesday, officials said.
"We are optimistic that water will recede from all the villages in the next two days," said Deputy Relief Commissioner Prabhat Ranjan Mohapatra, adding the highest 115 number of villages remained marooned in Puri district, followed by 52 villages in Kendrapara district.
Other five districts where people continued to remain marooned since a week were Bhadrak (5 villages), Cuttack (1), Dhenkanal (19), Jagatsinghpur (6) and Khurda (9). The government has stepped up relief operations in all the affected 23 districts, he said.
While the flood situation in major rivers has improved with recession of flood water at most of the places, water level of Subarnarekha was on the rise at Rajghat, Mr Mohapatra said.
He, however, said there was every likelihood that the river's water level would come down by late evening since there has been no rain either in upper or lower catchments.
Mr Mohapatra said as many as 41,801 houses have been damaged in the recent floods as per preliminary estimation. A total of 46 people have been killed in the flood with the highest 10 deaths reported from Bargarh district.
Medical teams have reached the villages and disinfection of tubewells has been started, he added.