Encroachment poses threat to springs at Pulwama’s Inder village

Farooz Ahmad

Pulwama, November 26

Unabated encroachment is posing threat to various springs at Inder village, 6 km away from Pulwama, while officials have turned a blind eye to it.

Locals said 40 out of 70 springs had already been encroached upon and converted into arable land, while others were facing danger of encroachment by vested interests in the village.

“Indraaz Nag (Nag in Kashmiri means a spring) is the prestigious spring of Inder village and the village owes its name to it. Besides, it is deemed holy by the Kashmiri Pandit community,” said Abdul Rashid Dar, an elderly resident of Inder village, adding that “it was spread over 15 kanals, but has shrunk to only one kanal”.

Some residents of the village said these springs continued to remain the source of drinking water for them as the village supply line mostly remained dry.

“More than 60 per cent of the villagers get drinking water from springs as the water supply lines laid by the Department of Public Health and Engineering in the village run dry,” adding that well-off villagers had sunk tubewells, but the commoners still relied on the springs.

Ghulam Qadir Wani, an elderly resident of the village, said the shrinking of the springs would trigger water crisis in the village.

Villagers said the government had a huge opportunity to encash the fresh water available in the village and if harnessed the water could be supplied to not only Inder village, but also other villages facing drinking water scarcity.

“The encroached springs are situated on the state land and as such no person can claim property rights over them,” said a villager, adding that it was only due to the administration’s apathy that the springs were allowed to shrink.

Auqib Ahmad Bhat, a village youth, blamed the block-level administration for allowing the springs to get extinct. “This sort of planning not only made the state land vulnerable to land-grabbers, but also blocked water sources of the springs bellow,” Auqib said, adding that if the whole area, including the state land would have been marked for boundary around a spring, the situation would have been different.

Environment activists have expressed concern over the shrinking of these water resources at Inder village. “The plugging of springs has affected the ecology of water bodies resulting into extinction of various species of trout fish,” said. Aakash Ahmad, an environmentalist, said many brooks in the Valley had also gone dry due to illegal plugging.

Assistant Commissioner, Revenue, Pulwama, Sajad Qadir said he was unaware of the issue and would order a survey. “Further action will be taken only after the survey is complete and assessment of ground situation,” he said.

The springs of Inder village came to the limelight after they became subject of Wahab Khaar’s poetry, one of the greatest Sufi poets of Kashmir.