As a first step, the ministry has not included engineers from the Birpur Barrage in armouring of the breached bank and pilot channel digging, currently underway.

Kosi Project’s Birpur office is headed by a chief engineer. Under him is a superintending engineer, barrage. Kushaha, Kunauli and Nirmali divisions under the barrage have an executive engineer each as their heads. All these officials, including chief engineer R C Prasad, have been working either from Supual or Nirmali. Not a single of these officials has been considered for the post-breach work.

In fact, engineers from Kosi project’s Darbhanga and Purnea office have been called to oversee the repair work.

While Darbhanga chief engineer G L Basak and his team of executive and assistant engineers have been supervising the repair work at 12 points of eastern bank at Kushaha and Purnea, chief engineer R P Ram’s team is in charge of repair from 13.9 point of the breached eastern bank.

The teams are also taking care of pilot channels being dug from western side near Lokahi, Nepal, to take the river’s course towards the barrage. A 50-feet-wide channel has already been dug for 3 km from Lokahi side.

When asked, Water Resources Minister Bijendra Yadav played down the “sidelining” Birpur/ Kushaha engineers, saying the Government needed “experts” and hence engaged Purnea and Darbhanga teams. “We cannot call it a punishment. We just wanted our best teams to get the work done,” he said.

However, the minister could not explain why the government did not use the “expertise” of these teams when spurs were being eroded by Kosi’s current from August 6 till the breach on August 18. He also had no answer if Birpur and Kushaha engineers were “incompetent and inefficient”.