"At least five deaths were reported in two districts as raging rivers collapsed thousands of huts, uprooted trees and damaged roads," Asim Sengupta, finance minister of West Bengal state, told AFP.

The minister said 1.6 million people had been made homeless.

Nearly a million people were cut off in the neighbouring eastern coastal state of Orissa, where two people drowned, disaster management minister Manmohan Samal said.

Four rivers were overflowing in Orissa, where medical teams were being sent to affected areas and air force helicopters were due to drop food packets.

In West Bengal, soldiers had been called to rescue tens of thousands of people marooned in flooded villages.

Schools and colleges in the affected districts were ordered shut to house displaced people.

In neighbouring Assam, six people have drowned since Saturday, while in the remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh 19 people died over the weekend due to mudslides triggered by a heavy downpour.

More than 350,000 people had taken shelter in government camps in Assam to escape from rising waters, the government said earlier this week, before flood waters started receding on Wednesday.

Every year the monsoon causes the Brahmaputra river to flood, submerging paddy fields, washing away villages, drowning livestock and killing people in Assam, a remote state of 26 million people.

In 2004, at least 200 people died and more than 12 million were displaced in the floods.

Weather officials have predicted more rains in the next 24 hours in West Bengal and Orissa.

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