Around 6 lakh people have been affected due to heavy rain and floods in the rivers like Mahanadi, Brahmani, Baitarani, Salandi and some other small tributaries, they said.

The Special Relief Commissioner's (SRC) office said that the state government has evacuated 52,573 people and kept them in several shelters and 315 free kitchens were opened to feed the flood-affected people.?

"The people who did not come to the shelters might be facing problems. But arrangements have been made to provide dry foods like 'chuda' (flattened rice), 'Mudhi' (puffed rice) and other items," an official at the SRC office said, adding that as many as 2,737 houses were reported to be damaged in the twin calamities of heavy rain and floods.

Stating that two persons have died in the calamity, the official said one death was reported from Keonjhar district while another from Jajpur district.?Benudhar Samal of Retang village under Basudevpur block in Bhadrak district said that they are spending days eating dry foods as they are unable to cook. "There is four feet high water in our kitchen. We are unable to cook," Samal, who along with his family of five, took shelter on the roof of a pucca house in the village.

Similar was the story of many people living in 1,898 villages spread over 22 districts of Odisha.? Meanwhile, ?the authorities of the Hirakud Dam on Saturday opened eight more sluice gates of the reservoir to release excess floodwater in the Mahanadi river. As the dam has been receiving a huge volume of flood water following heavy rain in upper catchment areas of the Mahanadi in Chhattisgarh, the authorities decided to open more gates.

With this, the excess floodwater is being released through a total of 20 sluice gates of Hirakud dam, officials said. The water level of Hirakud reservoir at 5 PM stood at 621.35 ft against a full capacity of 630 ft. While inflow is over 4.46 lakh cusec, 3.03 lah cusec water is being released through 20 gates of the dam, an official said.

The water flow in the Mahanadi river at Khairmal stands at 3.45 lakh cusec, while the discharge of flood water at Mundali in Cuttack was recorded at 3.37 lakh cusec. The districts in downstream of Hirakud dam were put on alert in view of the situation and the situation has now improved.

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that there was no major rain warning for the state for the next two days. However, light to moderate rain or thundershower is likely at many places in North Interior Odisha and at a few places in the remaining parts of the state on Saturday and Sunday.