Endless wait for tubewell connections

Aman Sood

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Patiala, April 4

With a new government in the saddle, thousands of farmers awaiting the release of tubewell connections for the past many years are now again making the rounds of the offices of the PSPCL.

They want the connections well before the start of the paddy season in July. The then SAD-BJP government had issued demand notices as a pre-poll bonanza, but thousands of farmers are still waiting for the elusive connection. Officials confirmed that as many as 30,000 demand notices for tubewells were issued by the PSPCL under the chairman’s quota in a couple of months before the Assembly polls.

Following the imposition of the model code of conduct in the first week of January, the release of about 10,000 tubewells was stopped.

The then halqa chiefs appointed by the previous regime held functions ahead of the polls to distribute the demand notices, bypassing the PSPCL officials, while the farmers affiliated with the Congress were allegedly ignored. The demand notices were valid for three months. Fresh notices will have to be issued as the ones issued in October are now null and void. “However, the government is likely to change the rules and might allow farmers to get the connections on priority depending on when they applied,” said a senior PSPCL official.

The procedure for issuing a tubewell connection is cumbersome. In 2015, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) allowed the state to release 1.25 lakh pending connections with certain conditions. The farmers paid almost Rs 1.5 lakh each to the state for a connection almost four years ago.

A Venu Prasad, CMD, PSPCL, said he would bring the matter to the notice of the government. “We will sort it out and release the connections soon,” he said.

Satnam Singh Behru, president, Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations, said, “The farmers are waiting for the connections for the past seven years. We have met the CMD in this context.”