CHANDIGARH:
A soldier never says die. Literally living up to this adage is retired
Army officer Col. Gurbirinder Singh Sandhu, who
is fighting a new battle to bring irrigation water to 25 parched border
villages in the Khemkaran Sector.
The former army officer, who fiercely fought the Chinese at NEFA in
1962 and then the Pakistanis in the Sialkot
Sector during the 1965 and 1971 wars, has now found himself a new
enemy in the corruption-ridden administration of the Upper Bari Doab Canal.
Encouraged by his recent success in having a local ruffian – Nihang Ajit Singh Phoola – arrested and booked on three separate counts
of murder, the colonel has written to state chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh seeking action against irrigation department
officials and politicians guilty of siphoning off more than Rs 100 crores from central government
funds.
This money was meant to maintain and enhance the UBDC System in the
Amritsar
and Gurdaspur districts to cope with additional water discharge
after the completion of the Ranjit Sagar Dam.
According to Col. Sandhu, "Works that should have been completed using the Rs 178 crores allocated by the
Centre in 2002, remained confined to irrigation department files,
and continued silting in the already choked UBDC canal system has
resulted in irreparable damage to the oldest (100 years old) canal
network in Punjab."
As a direct consequence of the fact that critical components of the
project to maintain and enhance flow in the canal system was not completed
in time, more than 25 villages at the tail end of the network have
been denied water for the past several years. The villages are fast
turning into a parched wasteland. Such villages include the border
areas of Rajoke, Bhakhana,
Mehndipur and the 1965 battleground of Khemkaran.
The situation, says the colonel, has been compounded by the fact that
the affected villages fall in the Khara
Majha or saline water belt, in which fresh water is available
only at depths below 500 feet below ground level.
"Only a handful of the
bigger farmers can afford expensive motors to run deep tube-wells.
For the remaining majority, the UBDC was like a lifeline and they
are all now close to complete ruin," he said.
"And instead of acting
against the officials found responsible in the state government’s
initial inquiry, both the present and the former irrigation ministers
— Mr Gurchet Singh
Bhullar and Mr
Lal Singh — not only protected such men,
but actually promoted them to top positions," Col. Sandhu
said. |
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