Poor rats are the easy target for whatever goes wrong in Bihar. After the rodents were held responsible for the mysterious disappearance of about 10-lakh liquor bottles from the police storerooms, they are being blamed for the destruction caused due to floods this monsoon.

The floods affected more than 1.71 crore people, damaged 2,500 homes and claimed 514 lives.

The bizarre “claim” has been made by none other Bihar’s water resources minister Lalan Singh, known to be very close to chief minister Nitish Kumar. “We have been able to find the main reason behind the devastating floods this year. Neither the heavy rains in the catchment areas of Nepal nor the ‘poor’ preparation by the state government is responsible for this. Rats brought the floods this year,” Singh told the media after a review of the flood situation on Friday.

Explaining his point further, the minister said the villagers tend to store grains on the embankments which attract rats. They later cause cavities in the embankments. “The holes weakened the embankments. Finally, even a little pressure from flood waters led to breach in the embankment,” he claimed.

As per reports, several big rivers such as Kamla Balan, Kosi, Gandak and Bagmati broke their mud embankments this time, displacing over 1.70 crore population and causing floods in half of the state.

But all are not impressed with the justification. “If rats had caused holes in the embankments and weakened them then why did the government in a written reply in the Bihar assembly assured us that all the embankments are secure? Officials are responsible for floods and they should be held accountable,” said BJP legislator Mithilesh Tiwari.

The RJD chief Lalu Prasad launched even more scathing attacks on the government. “As such, the Nitish Kumar government didn’t carry out any flood protection works or preventive works this year as the chief minister was busy making plans to form government with the BJP,” said Lalu.

“It was a man-made flood in Bihar. The engineers did all this. Nitish did something with the dam and brought floods to the state,” he alleged. According to him, all this was done to “make money” in the name of repairs.