The Indian Express team, however, found a number of families in several villages living without food or water for over a week now. In several cases, this team was the first outside contact for such families.

Tetulberia is a small village of about 30 families. All that is left of the village are two houses where over 15 families are putting up at present. The village has no access to the outside world. The only way to reach the village is a small boat, which the villagers use to bring in drinking water. With no food and water, these villagers are waiting for the relief materials to arrive. But nothing has arrived so far.

“Two days ago, the Ramkrishna Mission sent us some food. Other than that, we have been living on whatever we had stocked before the flood hit us,” said Kalipodo Midda, a villager. “Water here is not receding. We also have very little food left,” said Tulsi Maity, a 55-year-old villager.

A panchayat member, said: “The only way to reach the village is by boats. But there are hardly any boats available.”

The Indian Express team reached the village in a small makeshift boat. As soon as the boat reached the village, children started running towards it, thinking it to be a boat carrying relief material.

Similar conditions prevail in the surrounding villages of Kajlagarh, Lohabar, Kulup,

Purushottampur and Gholda — all in Bhagabanpur and Chandipur blocks.

The district administration, however, claimed that relief materials have reached almost every affected district.

“We have handed over 500 quintals of rice to the five affected gram panchayats in the area. We expect that the materials will reach the villagers very soon,” said Sudeep Ghosh, the Block Development Officer of Chandipur.

For the last two days, a disaster management team of the Border Security Force has been sitting idle in the district. Though the team arrived in Tamluk on Tuesday, so far, it has not been assigned any job.

“We have been receiving reports that villages are still inaccessible. Relief materials have also not reached several areas. We have the expertise to work in such situations but have been sitting idle for two days,” said a source in the BSF team.

BDO Ghosh, however, claimed: “We did not feel that the BSF team is needed. We might, however, use them tomorrow.”