The rain-swollen Khado river inundated more than 400 houses in Tilathi, Saptari, last week. With no proper outlet, houses in the eastern part of the settlement are still flooded. Hundreds of families of Tilathi have moved to higher grounds.

There are mainly two reasons due to which Tilathi locals face inundation problem every year. Locals living on the eastern side of Tilathi village have long been obstructing the embankment construction in Khado river.

Dev Narayan Yadav, a local, said the government should compensate families if the government acquires private land to build the embankment. Locals had protested against the construction of embankment after the Khado River Control Project denied compensation to the families.

Arbinda Prasad Gupta, senior divisional engineer of the Department of Water-Induced Disaster Management (DWIDM), said that the government has no policy to compensate locals.

“The government should make a clear policy for land acquisition,” said Gupta.

With no embankment, the Khado river every monsoon breaches the banks and waters gush into the settlement.

The second problem stems from the Indian side, which has constructed an embankment along the no-man’s land, which diverts floodwaters towards Tilathi village. 

Last year, 12 people were injured after locals removed a makeshift levee that the Indian side had allegedly built encroaching no-man’s land across Tilathi. People said that the construction of levee results in inundation on the Nepali side.

On May 2014, technicians from Nepal and India had agreed to drain waters of Khado and Jita streams through a channel to the Bhaluwahi stream.

“But the Indian side is not keen to resolve the problems even though Khado river control and management plan was handed over to India long ago,” said Madhukar Raj Rajbhandari, director general of the DWIDM.

In July last year, a bilateral meeting held after the clash in Tilathi had agreed to submit a report after forming a joint team of technicians to resolve the dispute.

People living in Tilathi, Rampura Malhaniya, Sakarpura, Iharwa, Koiladi and Barsain among other villages said inundation problem can be solved only if the concerned authorities show some seriousness.