Standing crops on large tracts of land on either side of the Bhima in Afzalpur have been damaged as the river began overflowing on Sunday.
Since the Veer Dam, built across the Nira, a tributary of the Bhima, and the Ujjain Dam, built across the Bhima in Maharashtra, received heavy inflow owing to the continuous rainfall in the catchment area, about one lakh cusecs of excess water was released into the river from these dams a few days ago.
As a precautionary measure, irrigation authorities in Afzalpur released about 1.3 lakh cusecs of water from Sonna Barrage built on the Bhima in the taluk as the barrage was almost full. The overflowing Bhima flooded agricultural fields in many villages downstream and destroyed standing crops.
