New Delhi: In the last week, India has witnessed what appears to be close to a hundred deaths due to rains, flooding due to rain, landslides caused by rain, and an extreme heat that has swept through north India during a season of elections and outdoor activity.
Fourteen people, 10 of whom where on election duty, died of heat stroke in Bihar in the last 24 hours alone. Most deaths were reported from Bhojpur. The mercury touched 44° Celsius at several places.
More than 30 people died of suspected heat stress disorders in Odisha on May 30, Times of India has reported. The deaths of 10 people were reported in the government hospital in Rourkela alone, Reuters reported.
In Jharkhand, three people are suspected to have died of heatstroke.
In UP’s Mirzapur, at least seven security personnel deployed for election duty have died of various reasons amid the extreme heat wave, a journalist posted on X.
Varanasi, a high-octane seat due for polls on June 1, and Babatpur recorded, at 47.0°C and 47.8°C the second highest maximum temperature ever recorded there, on May 30.
The Hindi paper Amar Ujala has noted that 166 people died of the extreme heat this year in UP alone.
While New Delhi’s extreme heat has led to concerns as to whether there is a public health crisis afoot, a 40-year-old labourer died of heat stroke. A Down to Earth report notes that according to World Bank estimates, nearly 75% of India’s workforce, or 380 million people, depend on heat-exposed labour. Delhi is also battling acute water shortage.
Residents of Mariampur village in Amravati of Maharashtra, according to a report by ANI are also facing acute water crisis and are forced to consume water by digging pits on the banks of a polluted pond.
Meanwhile, in other areas of the country, rain has been wreaking havoc.
The death toll in multiple landslides in Mizoram’s Aizawl district has settled at 29 after Cyclone Remal made landfall between Bengal and Bangladesh on May 26. Fourteen people died when a single stone quarry collapsed.
At least four people died in Bengal as a result of the cyclone. Remal has also caused floods in Manipur, in the middle of an ethnic conflict.
The heavy pre-monsoon rains in Kerala have led to 11 people dying in the state since May 19.