DVC water discharge into Bengal has jumped 30-fold in two years: Mamata

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee once again lashed out at the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) on Monday, claiming that the Central agency’s discharge of water from its reservoirs to the state downstream has soared an unprecedented 30 times this year compared to the 2023 monsoon season.

She attacked the DVC for what she called the agency’s “flood mismanagement record this year”, surpassing “its own dismal accounts of previous years”.

Banerjee, who has remained consistent in her criticism of the DVC for releasing large volumes of water from its reservoirs during the monsoon and flooding significant pockets of West Bengal, which fall in the project's downstream, alleged in an X post that the agency has “failed Bengal this year” to an “unprecedented degree”.

“A staggering 11-fold increase in DVC's water discharge in 2025, compared to 2024, has shaken us. It is 30 times higher than 2023!! There is a systematic attempt to trigger more and more flood-like situations across South Bengal. This is not a natural disaster. It's a man-made catastrophe, more and more,” Banerjee wrote.

The chief minister furnished DVC’s outflow figures in support of her claim. “The data speaks for itself: Outflow from DVC during June & July, 2024: 4,535 lakh cubic meters. Outflow from DVC during June & July, 2025: 50,287 lakh cubic meters,” she continued.

Noting that this “massive, sudden, unprecedentedly high release” during peak monsoon this year has “devastated our districts, destroying huge crops, breaching large number of embankments, damaging numerous roads, and forcing thousands to evacuate”, the Trinamool Congress supremo said she detected a “deep conspiracy” in this.

Equating the phenomenon to the larger agenda of identity politics which the Trinamool Congress is planning to pursue against the BJP in the run-up to the Assembly elections next year, Banerjee wrote: “Clearly, the centrally administered agency is becoming more and more anti-Bengal, in keeping with the ecosystem that the central establishment is trying to generate all over India today.

This is the second time in three weeks that Banerjee admonished the DVC and blamed the agency for wreaking flood havoc in south Bengal pockets.

On 15 July, the chief minister chaired a high-level meeting at state secretariat Nabanna to monitor flood-like situations in parts of the state and said, “The DVC is releasing waters in critical volumes to save themselves without caring for the consequences our state is suffering on account of their actions. We have been fighting this menace for the last 14 years without any positive result”.

Significant parts of south Bengal districts, including Paschim Medinipur, Hooghly and Howrah have remained at the receiving end of floods on account of overflowing rivers and heavy rains during the past two months.

The CM had, on previous occasions, also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging his intervention in the matter and advocating for dredging of the rivers and canals falling under the DVC’s catchment area.

“If dredged properly, the rivers can hold an additional four lakh cubic meters of water,” Banerjee had maintained.