Assam Boat Tragedy: Number of passengers on board found to be more than claimed earlier

GUWAHATI: In the latest development it was revealed that the number of passengers on a ferry boat named Maa Kamala, a private motorized country boat which capsized when it was travelling from Majuli to Nimatighat, is higher than what it was claimed, exposing incompetency of Assam Inland Water Transport department which operates 102 ferry services on major rivers of the state.

The boat mishap on Wednesday had exposed that the ferries so far have been running without registering the name of passengers so they could carry more passengers than the advised number of passengers flouting safety norms.

Earlier in the government data, it was revealed that there were only 90 passengers on board during the mishap. But a report released on September 11 evening has shown that the number of passengers increased to 92. Likewise, the total number of or traced alive passengers' number increased to 89 as well.

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The death toll stands at two after one Indreswar Bora's body was found at Biswanath Ghat yesterday by the forest department officials. The body was identified with the help of documents recovered from the victim's possession.

One person Dr Bikramjit Barua is still missing and remained untraced.

IWT department has seemed to learn nothing in all these years even after a very recent boat mishap near Guwahati in September 2018 which have claimed three lives. Reasons cited for the same as overloading the unreliable engines and lack of crew training to respond properly.

The Assam Government has finally decided to start Ropax service after five lives were sacrificed in the river Brahmaputra in less than five years and in both the terms of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party Government having Chandra Mohan Patowary as Minister of Transport both the time.

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