West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday threatened to “disengaged entirely” from power utility Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) and “withdraw” the state’s participation from the corporation over floods in south Bengal.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Banerjee alleged that the “unprecedented, unplanned and unilateral” release of an enormously huge volume of water at nearly 5 lakh cusec from the combined system of Maithon and Panchet dams, owned by DVC, had caused devastating floods in all districts of south Bengal, causing severe misery to the common people. “This huge quantum of discharge from DVC dam system has never happened in the past,” she said.

Kolkata-headquartered DVC is jointly owned by West Bengal, Jharkhand and the Centre. Banerjee said it was “concerning” that the corporation appeared to have “shifted focus” from its primary objective of flood control in the Damodar river, as mandated by law, to power generation.

The Chief Minister, also the Trinamool Congress chief, on Wednesday said the flood situation in parts of the south districts of Bengal was “man-made”, caused by the release of excess water by dams in Jharkhand.

“I have personally toured the flood-affected areas to take stock of the situation on ground. What I found was the utter misery of lakhs of our people and unprecedented destruction of property and infrastructure, inflicted by such unplanned and uncoordinated release of water by the DVC system,” Banerjee said in the letter to Modi, adding she was compelled to call it a “man-made flood”, a situation engineered by sheer neglect and turning a blind eye to a sustained request from the stakeholder.

The Chief Minister said information about the critical condition of downstream rivers, already flowing close to or above the extreme danger level, was conveyed to the DVC authorities by officials of the West Bengal government, along with a request to defer the release of water that was made from time to time on September 16. “I also spoke over phone with the Chairman DVC on the night of September 16. In spite of all these, the combined dam release was increased in quick succession, in the early hours of September 17, from 90,000 cusec (at 11:20 p.m. on September 16) to 2,50,000 cusec, within just 9 hours (till 08:10 a.m. on September 17),” Banerjee said.

She said if this “unilateral approach” continued, bringing hardship to the people of West Bengal, the State government would be left with no option but to disengage entirely from DVC and withdraw the State’s participation.

Senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari criticised Banerjee for threatening to sever ties with DVC, stating that it would lead several districts in southern Bengal to plunge into darkness.

“The cumulative power generation capacity of DVC in West Bengal is 4306 MW...Does Mamata Banerjee feel that West Bengal is a separate country? How can she even utter these words? How does she plan to generate/ substitute the 4300 MW shortage if she snaps ties with DVC? Or is she planning to take Bengal back to the dark ages?” Adhikari said in a post on X.

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