Development fails to touch Mirzapur village

Rajmeet Singh

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 10

It seems that development has failed to touch the lives of 500-odd residents of Mirzapur village, located barely 9 km from the busy Kurali-Baddi highway.

Broken roads, poor water supply and poor employment generated under MGNREGA have given every reason to the inhabitants of the Gujjar-dominated village to threaten boycott of the forthcoming Assembly elections.

Such is the anger that a section of the youth has announced to press the None of the Above (NOTA) button in the elections.

Kuldeep, an inhabitant of the village, said, “Repeated representations to the state government to repair the link road to the village have fallen on deaf ears.”

Left to the mercy of the nature, the villager complains that despite development taking place a few kilometres away on the road leading to the private resort being developed by the ruling family of Badals at Palanpur village, they are bereft of basic amenities.

Dila Ram, a former member of the village panchayat, said they had given free-of-cost land for carving out a shorter road from the village to the Kurali-Baddi road. “When the Mirzapur dam was developed on their land, we were assured employment, but the Forest Department is employing outsiders and our youth are roaming without job,” he lamented.

“The problems are aplenty. There is no source of irrigation from government tubewell. Most of the families in the village cannot afford to bore their own tubewell and are dependent on rains,” he added.