Palanquins used to carry patients at Nurpur village

Rajiv Mahajan 

Nurpur, October 18

Imagine a village without even a single road! Harian village of Ambal gram panchayat in Jawali sub-division is bereft of road connectivity. In case of medical emergency, villagers walk miles to reach the Harian-Bhalar link road at Chaniyala.  

At times, locals carry patients in palanquins. The 4-km kutcha road from Harian to Chaniyala is in bad shape. Residents of as many as 25 hamlets comprising 30 to 40 houses each are the worst affected. Bahadur Singh, a villager, has to take his wife to the Nurpur Civil Hospital for dialysis twice a week. He carries her in a palanquin up to the Chaniyala road.  

He said residents had even transferred their land in the name of Public Works Department (PWD)  for the construction of a pucca road, but to no avail.  Rajinder Singh, Puran, Manoj, Des Raj, Uttam Chand and Manmohan, all residents of Harian village, said politicians always turned up for votes, but when it came to solving their genuine problem, they looked the other way. 

They said taking patients and pregnant women to hospital at night was not easy.  Mehar Singh, pradhan of Ambal gram panchayat, said the land from Chaniyala to Harian wasn’t under the PWD. However, the department had repaired the kutcha road. 

The problem was taken up with government representatives and PWD authorities many times, but nothing happened. The villagers have now appealed to Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur to redress their problem.

Jagtar Singh, Executive Engineer, PWD division, Jawali, said the 3-km stretch between Harian and Chaniyala came under the Forest Department, which had started the process of land transfer. “The road will be constructed as soon as the forest clearance is received,” he added.