Shahpur Kandi dam project deal rekindles hope among farmers

Dinesh Manhotra

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Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 4

Signing of a fresh deal between the Punjab and J&K Governments on the Shahpur Kandi project has rekindled a ray of hope among the farmers of Samba and Kathua districts as over 32,000 hectares of barren land willturnfertile if the state gets its share of water from the Ravi river.

Due to the inordinate delay in implementation of the project, a huge chunk of rain-fed agricultural land has virtually turned barren due to non-availability of irrigation facilities.

The J&K and Punjab Governments signed a deal on Friday for the completion of the dam project, the work for which was abandoned two years ago following a dispute between the two governments. As per the bilateral agreement signed by the two governments in 1979 on sharing water from the Ravi, J&K will get 1,150 cusecs of water by constructing a canal from Satwain to Basantpur.

“The agreement between J&K and Punjab is going to change the destiny of the farmers of Samba and Kathua districts as water from the Ravi river will turn a huge chunk of barren land into fertile,” Kathua MLA Rajiv Jasrotia told The Tribune. Jasrotia, who has been protesting for the last two years for the completion of the project, said the signing of the fresh deal was going to change socio-economic conditions of the people in these twin districts, especially inhabitants of the Kandi belt. “Over 32,000 hectares of land in the Kandi belts of these two districts would turn fertile after the implementation of the project,” Jasrotia said, adding that he had been taking up the issue inside and outside the Assembly for the last two years.

As the project is very important for Kathua district, Minister of State (MoS) in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh, who is the Lok Sabha member of Udhampur-Doda-Kathua, has also taken keen interest in getting it implemented.

Successive J&K Governmentshad never shown any interest in getting theagreement implemented so there was resentment among the farming community.

On June 20, 2015,then CMMufti Mohammad Sayeed had announced that the state government had decided to seek intervention of the Centre to resolve the issue with Punjab.