Slow, unsteady: Pathankot stuck in snail lane

Ravi Dhaliwal

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Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This adage aptly describes the condition of the once-scenic Pathankot which is fast losing its sheen because of several reasons.

If we are to zero in on two main causes, it would be perennially closed railway crossings in the city and heavy influx of illegal auto-rickshaws.

Apart from lip service, little is done to ease the flow of traffic at the crossings. There are six phataks on the narrow gauge of Pathankot-Jogindernagar track. When a train is scheduled to pass, all of them are closed simultaneously for agonisingly long periods of time. People, of course, suffer.

Simrit Walia, a school teacher, is exasperated as she stands at one such crossing. Her school is on the other side. She is made to wait for 35 minutes in the morning and again in the evening.

“Why can’t the authorities do something to alleviate the sufferings of thousands of people? The Railways should come up with a proposal to do away with the crossings,” she says as she jostles for space with nearly 200 other harried commuters.

Mayor Anil Vasudeva says the authorities are giving a final shape to a proposal for sealing all six railway crossings. “Experts have been claiming that these crossings are the reason for the town’s economic slowdown,” he adds.

“Gurdaspur MP Vinod Khanna is in touch with the Railway Ministry. It has come up with a proposal to let the train end its journey at Dalhousie road station, 10 km from Pathankot. If this happens, the train will bypass the city,” he says.

On paper, it looks a good idea. But ask residents and they say they have been listening to the proposal for the past 18 years, ever since Khanna, a four-time MP, was elected for the first time in 1998.

Pathankot is part of the Gurdaspur parliamentary segment.

“The MP is in the habit of pulling wool over the eyes of the residents. Making the train culminate its journey at Dalhousie road station is not a solution. The train brings with it thousands of persons from the hills who do business here. The town's economy is dependent on them. Khanna had made this a poll promise when he contested his first election. Since then, he has been making hollow promises,” says a livid Kartik Wadhera, a hotelier who crosses two railway crossings on the way to his hotel.

Not all was wrong with the city earlier. From the early 1960s till the mid-1990s, the city’s economy thrived on three Ts — tourism, timber and transport. As Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir offered massive tax incentives, a majority of businesses shifted there. The position is such that hotels, and there are many of them, are recording just 10 per cent occupancy rate, while timber business vanished into thin air.

Hundreds of illegal auto-rickshaws sounded the death knell for the transport business, besides creating bedlam.

The Mayor says 950 vehicles are registered with the Municipal Corporation (MC) and the DTO's office. And there are 3,000 unregistered ones, sources say.

“A majority of illegal auto-rickshaw owners are registered as voters here. In the 2012 elections, they voted for BJP’s Ashwani Sharma. This explains why the BJP is soft on them,” says a DTO official.

The authorities run up against a wall in their fight against illegal vehicle owners. “They keep fighting among themselves, but when any outside agency infringes upon their ‘rights’ they put up a unified front,” says a transport official.

Another problem is the seven-decade-old leaking sewerage system. A massive dose of funds is needed to replace old pipes with new ones. The Mayor claims the state government has sanctioned Rs 80 crore to fix the problem. Insiders, however, say the money will be spent on laying pipes in new colonies, leaving residents in old areas in the lurch, again.

Old-timers say the menace of stray animals is pushing them to the limit. Rakesh Sharma, district BJP general secretary, says more cow sheds are the need of the hour. “Stray animals come from nearby jungles. They have claimed several lives,” he says.

Residents might have put the January terror attack on the Air Force station behind them, but the talking point remains MLA Sharma’s performance. He is credited with the opening of a government college, a stadium and a state-of-the-art auditorium.

But there are a few blemishes on his report card. His detractors say the projects he started were a matter of routine. “He could have done better by addressing the problem of drugs flowing from nearby Bhadroa. I fail to understand why Sharma, like the police, is quiet on the matter,” says Congress’ Raman Bhalla, who lost to Sharma in the last elections.

The situation has come to such a pass that residents are least interested in elections. “I have been voting for three decades. Has anything changed?” says Abrol Nagar resident Pushp Lata as she points to the broken road leading to her home.

Are the powers that be listening?

Last election result

Winner: Ashwani Sharma (BJP)

Votes polled: 42,218

Runner-up: Raman Bhalla (Congress)

Votes polled: 24,362