Jaipur, May 4: In what would emerge as a major embarrassment for the Rajasthan administration, a critical mechanism which is used for weather forecasting and could have helped the state meteorological department in alerting about the deadly May 2 dust-storm, was found dysfunctional or non-functional. According to the India Meteorological Department, the doppler radar, which could have predicted or given a hint about the dust storm, was not working for the last 10 days or so.

The doppler radar was imported from a Finnish company named Vaisala and had not been working due to some technical issue, said an IMD official. The additional director general of IMD, Devendra Pradhan, was quoted by NDTV as saying that they had been issuing alerts about the storm dust since April 29 using the doppler radar from Delhi but the Jaipur radar had not been working. The official said that the Met Department would have been in much better position had the radar in Jaipur been working. A doppler operates in a radius of over 250 km.

However, Pradhan added that the engineers of Vaisala, the Finnish company, which provided the doppler radar have reached and are working to fix the radar. Sadly, the damage has already been done.

But the acting director of IMD, Jaipur, Himanshu Sharma said that the doppler radar had stopped working on May 2 and was fixed the next day itself. He also said that they had issued a warning to the relief department about the dust storm.

124 people have been reported to be dead, and several were left injured after a high-intensity dust storm hit parts of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Agra saw the highest casualties with 43 people, including children. Nine others died in other parts of the state including Bijnaur, Saharanpur and Bareilly.

In Rajasthan, at least 27 people died, and more than a 100 injured as thunderstorm and rainfall  hit Alwar, Bharatpur and Dholpur districts. The worst affected district was Alwar. Massive destruction was caused by the storm in North India that devastated hundreds and caused loss of lives and livelihood.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 04, 2018 11:50 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).