Srinagar, July 04: Senior Congress leader and former minister Ghulam Ahmed Mir on Tuesday “alarmed” the J&K administration to “shun the photo ops” for some time and take practical measures to prevent the Srinagar city from flood-like situations by immediately starting de-silting of the river Jhelum, Dal and Wular lakes. He warned the administration that if the de-silting project of the said water bodies is not undertaken immediately, the people of Srinagar will have to bear huge losses like in 2014.
Mir in a statement said, “River Jhelum, Dal and Wular lakes have lost their capacity due to enormous siltation from years together but, the local administration, busy in show-offs, does not have any concern about it.”
It was only in the last Congress regime that the work of de-siltation was undertaken, however, since then no practical work has been done to save the people of Kashmir from the devastations of floods, Mir said, adding that the government has spent crores of rupees on flood mitigation measures, but the reality on the ground is not encouraging.
“It takes only a few hours of rain to trigger a flood-like situation in Kashmir, particularly in Srinagar,” Mir said while expressing dismay over the sluggish execution of the flood control project.
“Flood Control project of the river Jhelum is a very important and vital project under Prime Minister’s so-called Development Package. This project was conceived to protect Kashmir from devastating floods like 2014. After all approvals, a fund of Rs 114 crores out of 1623 crores has been released by the Central government in March 2022. A tender of Rs 229 crores was floated by Irrigation and Flood Control Department, Kashmir in October 2022. After 5 months, the tender finally got cancelled. More than one year has passed and the tender is not being floated yet,” Mir said.
The Congress leader expressed “surprise” over the reports that the new tender is ready, but is awaiting instructions from the higher-ups. Even in Jal Jeevan Mission, out of Rs 14,000 crores, only Rs 750 crores has been spent till date, he said.
“These deadlocks need to be ended without any further delay so that further time is not wasted for dredging and de-silting of the river Jhelum, Dal and Wular lakes,” Mir said.
