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Congress leader demands more contingents of Army to help cyclone-ravaged BengalBy Hindustan Times

Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking more contingents of Army for West Bengal, which has been ravaged by Cyclone Amphan.

In the letter, Chowdhury has said that the West Bengal administration has "miserably failed" to cope with this disastrous situation.

"Out of desperation," Chowdhury starts his letter, "I do like to draw your kind attention that there is no tangible improvement of post-Amphan devastation in West Bengal, which has already assumed catastrophic dimension."

He then describes the situation and says there is no electricity in large parts of the state including capital Kolkata. He also says that there is acute shortage of drinking water and there are fears of water contamination.

Chowdhury is an MP from Berhampore in West Bengal. He has served as the president of the Bengal unit of the Congress.

At least five columns of the Army were pressed into service in Kolkata last week at the request of the state government to help in road clearances, along with teams of the National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force.

The National Disaster Response Force had earlier said they were putting together 10 more teams to help the state. The state already has 26 NDRF teams in the cyclone affected areas of Bengal.

The Centre had also released Rs 1,000 crore to the West Bengal government, as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited the state on Friday last week to take stock of the devastation caused by the cyclone.

Cyclone Amphan, the most severe storm in the Bay of Bengal since the super cyclone of 1999, made landfall around 20km east of Sagar Island in the Sunderbans on Wednesday last week, cutting off road links, snapping telecommunications and power lines. It killed about 86 people in West Bengal including about 15 in state capital Kolkata.

The Bengal government had earlier in the day asked the railways ministry to stop the Shramik Special trains from reaching the state till May 26, pointing that the district administration was already stretched to its limits.

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