Continuous rain in the Darjeeling hills prompted many schools to suspend classes

Darjeeling, Sept. 26: Continuous rain in the hills for the past 48 hours prompted many schools to suspend classes today and others to advance their Puja vacation by three days.

A stretch of about 20 metres of the 18 Lebong Cart Road in Darjeeling caved in around 10.30 last night, disrupting traffic between the town and areas like Singamari and Lebong on the fringes and even to Jorethang in Sikkim.

Although there is an alternative route through the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park to bypass the cave-in, St Joseph’s School (North Point) decided to close down for the Puja vacation today itself.

The Puja holiday was earlier scheduled from September 30.

“Even though there is an alternative route to reach our school, we thought it would be too much of an inconvenience to ask students to use that congested stretch. This is why we decided to advance the Puja vacation,” said Father Kinley Tshering, rector of North Point School in Singamari, around 3km from Darjeeling town. The day scholars come to school in buses or cars. Some of them also walk to school. Classes will resume after vacation on October 16, as scheduled.

Father Tshering said the parents of the boarders have been informed. The school has around 600 boarders from the hills, Siliguri, Calcutta, Bihar, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and even Thailand.

Mount Hermon School, which is situated in the same area as North Point, however, did not suspend classes today.

“If the rain persists we may think of closing down for a day or two,” said George Fernandez, principal of Mount Hermon.

Asked if the Puja holidays, scheduled from October 1, would be advanced, Fernandez said: “With the earthquake, then the landslide and the rains the general spirit is very low. I personally would have wanted to close down for vacation but again if we do so the parents will be inconvenienced as most of them have already booked tickets for October 1. Rescheduling their tickets during tourist season would be difficult.”

Mount Hermon authorities, however, said they might allow boarders from nearby areas like Sikkim to leave earlier if the rain persisted.

Many schools like Ramakrishna Siksha Parisad and St Robert’s Higher Secondary, located in the heart of the town, also suspended classes because of the rain.

Weather experts have warned that a low pressure had developed in the region and there could be more rain in the days to come

“A low pressure trough is hovering over north Bengal and adjoining Bihar at 5.8km above the sea level. This would cause heavy to very heavy rainfall in Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts in the next 24 hours,” Indranil Sengupta, the assistant meteorological officer of the Regional Met Office in Jalpaiguri, said.

The stretch of 18 Lebong Cart Road that caved in is likely to take almost a month to be restored.

District magistrate Saumitra Mohan said: “Engineers from the public works department are trying to get the road temporarily restored but it will take about a month to permanently repair the stretch.”

TT