LIVE | Nepal floods: Fresh rain alert in disaster zone but glacier lake shrinks: Reports

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday said no flood victim in the state would be allowed to face any hardship, while the water minister asserted that Nepal's recent flood disaster posed no threat to the state, but authorities remained on alert.

The chief minister reviewed the situation in flood-affected areas of Ballia and distributed relief material, according to a statement.

The chief minister said excessive rainfall over the past few days has caused flooding in 26 districts, affecting more than 1.71 lakh people and 251 villages.

Uttar Pradesh Water Resources Minister Swatantra Dev Singh said Nepal’s flood posed no threat to the state, but authorities remained on alert.

“There is no threat to Uttar Pradesh from the flood disaster in Nepal, but we remain alert every moment and all our flood-affected districts are safe,” Singh told PTI.

An 11-member Indian team, comprising medical personnel and tunnel-rescue specialists, arrived in Nepal on Saturday to provide specialised technical assistance to ongoing effort to rescue workers trapped or unaccounted for inside hydropower project tunnels following devastating flash floods.

The team, sent at the request of the Nepal government, reached the Trishuli area after conducting an aerial reconnaissance of the Chilime and Langtang areas and began assessing the situation for rescue operations, according to Nepalese authorities.

An 82-member joint security team comprising Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and Nepal Police personnel has been working since Friday night to clear debris and reach people believed to be trapped inside a tunnel at the Trishuli-3A Hydropower Project in Rasuwa near the Nepal-Tibet border.

Rescue efforts have been complicated by mud and debris blocking the tunnel entrance and adverse weather conditions.

Nepali security forces have so far rescued 191 workers from tunnels at various hydropower projects, according to the Nepal Army. However, more than 100 people are believed to be trapped inside a tunnel at the under-construction Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa.

A 34-year-old man from Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar district has gone missing in Nepal following devastating floods and landslides, with his family losing contact with him.

Karan Sharma, a resident of Malukahi village in Kaptanganj tehsil, was working as an electrician foreman at the 216 MW Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Nepal's Rasuwa district. His name was later included in the list of employees reported missing after the disaster.

According to his family, they last spoke to Sharma on the night of August 26. They have since made repeated attempts to contact him but have been unable to establish communication.

The family is trying to gather information through project officials in Nepal and relevant helplines and has also approached the local administration for assistance.

According to the Independent Power Producers' Association, Nepal, several employees working at the hydropower projects in the Rasuwa region have been out of contact since the floods. As many as 76 employees associated with Andritz Hydro and working on the Upper Trishuli-1 project are reportedly missing.

Dr Priyanka Choudhary (39), a Finland-based doctor originally from Bilaspur, is among two NRI women from Chhattisgarh reported missing after flash floods struck Nepal on August 25.

Priyanka and Dr Meena Gupta, a British citizen from Surguja, were part of a group of about 77 pilgrims associated with the Isha Foundation who had undertaken the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra.

The group had completed the pilgrimage and reached the Rasuwagadhi immigration centre on the Nepal-Tibet border on August 25 for formalities to cross into Tibet when the flash flood struck.

For the Choudhary family, the last conversation with Priyanka has become an agonising memory.

“Her mother spoke to Priyanka at around 9 am on August 25. She told her she was at the immigration centre and would speak later. At 9.14 am, the tragedy struck. Unware about it, we kept waiting for her call, but later media reports shocked us. We tried calling her, but she could not be contacted," father Ramesh Choudhary, a 63-year-old businessman, told PTI.

The previous night, the family had spoken to Priyanka for nearly an hour. She had enthusiastically narrated her experiences from the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and told them she would reach Kathmandu on August 25.

As Nepal grapples with the devastation caused by deadly flash floods, schoolchildren in Jammu have come together to offer prayers, express solidarity with the affected families and contribute towards relief efforts.

With prayers on their lips and concern in their hearts, the students of Shiksha Niketan and Dewan Devi Higher Secondary Schools gathered on their school grounds to pay tribute to those who lost their lives and remember families still awaiting news of missing loved ones.

At Shiksha Niketan Higher Secondary School, students and their parents also took part in a voluntary donation drive for flood relief, contributing whatever they could towards the effort.

The UK has sent a Rapid Deployment Team to Nepal to support its 33 nationals affected by the devastating floods in the Himalayan nation even as appeals and prayers continue here by their family members, several of them British Indians.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said the Rapid Deployment Team will be in action in Kathmandu from Saturday, providing additional support on the ground and coordinating assistance for British nationals arriving at and departing from the airport.

This is over and above the 5 million pounds of humanitarian support for relief and recovery efforts already pledged.

Among those affected are British Indians from the South London Sanatan Mandir and Community Centre, who were on the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra as part of a pilgrimage tour organised by the temple.

The FCDO said British nationals in Nepal who require consular assistance must contact the British Embassy in Kathmandu or call its own UK helpline +44 (0)20 7008 5000.

Nepal on Saturday praised India’s efforts towards helping it in times of crisis, and described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “exceptionally generous”.

Speaking to PTI Videos, Nepal Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle said that New delhi has indicated it would provide generous assistance for reconstruction.

Since Wednesday, India has dispatched 57.6 tonnes of relief material to the flood-ravaged areas of Nepal. An 11-member Indian team comprising medical personnel and tunnel rescue experts also arrived in Nepal to assist local authorities, following a request from Kathmandu.

“The Government of India and Prime Minister Modi have been exceptionally generous. I was in the government when the 2015 earthquake struck, and I recall the generosity of the Indian government was really noteworthy,” he said.

Wagle said special supplies had also been flown in from New Delhi following floods and that India had indicated it would provide “very generous assistance for reconstruction.” The finance minister added, “Such support has also been forthcoming from all our neighbours.”

A large number of Indian pilgrims stranded in Tibet began returning to Nepal on Saturday through an alternate border point after massive flash floods destroyed the Gyirong border post.

The Gyirong-Nepal border post is the main entry and exit point for Tibet through Nepal. Hundreds of foreign tourists, most of them pilgrims taking part in Kailash Manasarovar Yatra, were stranded after the post was destroyed in Wednesday's devastating flash floods, which have killed over 600 people.

Stranded pilgrims, including several Indians, began crossing into Nepal through the Zhangmu border point, which was closed earlier due to earthquakes and landslides in the region.

Former Chairman of Defence Research and Development Organisation G Sateesh Reddy was among the Indian pilgrims who returned to the Nepal border on Saturday through Zhangmu.

Earlier, China's official media reported that 555 tourists were among 1,000 people evacuated from Gyirong County.

Twenty-eight pilgrims from Andhra Pradesh who travelled to Nepal for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra have safely returned after completing their pilgrimage, following a tense encounter with flash floods during their journey.

P Venkatramana, Managing Director of a Tirupati-based private travel agency, said the group had travelled from India to Kathmandu and had to wait for around three days due to a delay in obtaining their Chinese visas.

The pilgrims left Kathmandu around 6.30 am after receiving the visas and travelled for nearly three hours, covering around 80 kilometres, when they encountered the flood situation near a small village located in a hilly area.

“There was no rain or even a cloud until then. It was bright and sunny and the villagers were carrying on with their daily activities. Suddenly, an extremely heavy flow of water entered the river and nobody understood what was happening,” a pilgrim told PTI Videos on Saturday.

He said vehicles were swept away and crashed into one another as the floodwaters surged, prompting their bus driver to immediately stop the vehicle.

Within two or three minutes of noticing the danger, the driver made a U-turn and drove the bus up the hill beside the road, he said, adding that once the bus reached the hill, other vehicles and villagers, including schoolchildren, were also moved to safety.

The pilgrim said a bridge near a village collapsed soon after the floodwaters surged and several houses and villages along the river were also swept away.

According to him, five buses had left the hotel through the travel agency, of which two returned safely, while one was stranded but its occupants managed to return the next day.

Two buses carrying people from West Bengal went missing and there has been no information about them so far.