The flood and landslide-hit hills, Terai, and Dooars regions of North Bengal saw further stabilization in the past 24 hours with no casualties reported.
Officials said the absence of fresh rainfall has helped accelerate relief, rescue, and restoration work, preventing the situation from worsening.
In Darjeeling district, the worst affected by the disaster, repair work on several damaged roads has been completed. However, the main connecting route between the hills and the plains remains out of service.
“Alternative routes such as Tindharia Road and Pankhabari Road are being used to bring down stranded tourists from the hills. Most of them have already reached Siliguri safely,” said a district administration official.
Weather officials have predicted no heavy rain across North Bengal in the next 24 hours, although light to medium showers are expected in Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, and Cooch Behar districts today, for which a yellow alert has been issued.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who spent the last two days touring affected areas and overseeing relief operations, is scheduled to return to Kolkata this afternoon.
She is likely to share further updates on administrative measures after reaching the state capital. Her visit, however, has not been free from political controversy.
The Chief Minister stopped by a Siliguri hospital where BJP MP Khagen Murmu is undergoing treatment after he and the party’s chief whip in the Assembly, Shankar Ghosh, were allegedly attacked in Bamandanga, Jalpaiguri, while distributing relief materials yesterday evening.
While Murmu met the Chief Minister briefly, Ghosh reportedly declined to meet her.
“I refused to meet me. Khagen da (Khagen Murmu) was not in a position to speak, so she met him. She was there for 2 minutes, and his media team kept clicking photographs. This is nothing but a gallery show,” Ghosh said.
The BJP has sharply criticized Banerjee’s move. The party’s IT Cell chief and central observer for Bengal, Amit Malviya, accused her of “cheap publicity,” alleging that the incident of violence was the handiwork of ruling party supporters.
“It comes as no surprise that this was yet another crass attempt by the Chief Minister to gain cheap publicity, especially after the violence unleashed by marauding mobs in Bamandanga under Sulkapara, an area long used to settle illegal Bangladeshis,” Malviya wrote on social media.
However, Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh termed the Chief Minister’s visit as a humanitarian gesture.
“This is what we believe in the Trinamool Congress. The BJP is responsible for the people’s anger. But the Trinamool does not support physical attacks as an expression of that anger, it condemns them. We wish Khagen Babu a speedy recovery,” Ghosh said.
“At the same time, we ask: ‘have you forgotten the attacks on Trinamool leaders and workers in Tripura by the BJP? And the repeated attacks on Mamata Di during the CPM regime?’ Mamata Di stands for non-violence. The CM believes in the politics of courtesy,” he added.
The political blame game has only added to the tension in North Bengal, even as the administration continues its focus on restoring normalcy in the disaster-stricken hills and plains.
