Chandigarh: With the fresh rains lashing several parts of Punjab on Wednesday and in view of flood-like situation due to ongoing heavy rains in the region, the state government has announced closure of all government, aided and private schools in the state till Saturday.

Announcing the decision on social media, state education minister Harjot Bains said that all the schools in Punjab would remain closed from August 23 to August 26 in the wake of heavy rains in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab which has created flood-like situation in many parts of the state.

Heavy downpour in Himachal Pradesh

Meanwhile, according to media reports, the downpour in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh has also caused an increase of water inflow into the Pong Dam and Bhakra Dam. It was said to be 1.28 lakh cusecs into Bhakra Dam and 1.58 lakh cusecs into Pong Dam on Wednesday. The same was 1.05 lakh cusecs and 58,702, respectively on Tuesday.

Pertinently, Bhakra Dam was thus releasing 58,400 cusecs of water and Pong Dam was releasing 67,083 cusecs of water downstream Punjab because of the heavy inflow of the water into the dams. The water is released though in a controlled manner from the Pong dam on the Beas river and Bhakra dam on Sutlej due to torrential rains in the catchment areas of neighbouring Himachal Pradesh (HP) and the subsequent huge and excessive water inflow. This is done so as to check the rising water level of its reservoirs of the two dams.

Pertinently, while many parts of Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday witnessed heavy rains and landslides causing road blockades including Chandigarh-Shimla national highway, the weather officials have issued an orange alert of heavy to very heavy rains on Thursday and heavy rains on August 25 and August 26.

Most affected areas

It may be recalled that only till about a week ago, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Army teams had to be deployed in many parts of Punjab to rescue hundreds of people stuck in inundated areas following the release of water from the Bhakra and Pond dams downstream Punjab after these two dams brimmed due to heavy rains in their catchment areas in Himachal Pradesh. The most affected areas then were Ropar, Nawan Shahr, Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Sangrur, Moga, Ferozepur and Mansa.

Meanwhile, the areas which are affected due to heavy rains in the state on Wednesday included Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Tarn Taran.

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