Jhelum poses flood threat, but dredging deadlines not met

Amit Khajuria

Tribune News Service

Jammu, April 24

With only 1.20 lakh cubic feet dredging having been done in the Jhelum so far against the targeted 17 lakh cubic feet, the river can again cause the havoc that it did in September 2014.

The dredging of the river, which had overflown and breached its banks on the night of September 6 and 7, 2014, drowning almost half of the summer capital, should have been completed by December 2015. The Centre had released the funds for the purpose but the political and administrative lethargy combined with corruption at high levels has once again placed Kashmir at the mercy of weather gods, official sources told The Tribune.

Twice this year, the Jhelum threatened to repeat the horrifying scenes of 2014. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has time and again impressed upon the authorities and engineers to speed up the dredging work so that the Valley is not faced with floods yet again but her directions seem to have fallen on deaf ears as the authorities are still working at a slow pace.

Sources said instead of making the contract firm and engineers accountable for the inordinate delay in executing the dredging work of the Jhelum, the Ministry of Irrigation and Flood Control was busy in other activities. “This is a sorry state of affairs in the government. The dredging work is slow because the sand mafia and encroachers enjoying political patronage have become a major hurdle in clearing the blockage of water and this creates flood-like situations,” a top source told The Tribune.