35 km from capital, no road leads to Ropar’s Tanda

Arun Sharma

Tribune News Service

Ropar, June 11

Tanda village in Ropar block is hardly 35 km from the state capital, but has no road connectivity. The 2-km dirt track that connects the village with the Purkhali-Bardar road remains inundated during the monsoon, leaving this sub-mountainous area inaccessible as two choes fall on the section.

Residents say their pleas to politicians as well as officials over the decades have failed to yield result. So much so that they have now stopped making efforts to get a metalled road constructed.

Ram Ratan, a farmer, says there is no land reserved for the road to connect the village with the main road. The dirt track passes through private land with multiple owners from Tanda and nearby Bardar village. A large portion is also owned by outsiders.

“Our living conditions get challenging during monsoon,” he says. As the village is surrounded by hillocks, rainwater accumulates in the fields and the flooded choes virtually block the route for vehicular traffic, he says.

Former sarpanch Karnail Singh says he visited officials and politicians over 10 years, but to no avail. When choes are flooded during the monsoon, villagers use ropes to help students cross over, he says. During medical exigency, the family has to get medicines as it is difficult to move the patient out.

Karnail says residents have already donated their land for the road and land owners from Bardar village too have agreed to swap their land in the area, yet the government continues to dither.

Public Works Department XEN Vishal Gupta said the survey of area was conducted a few years ago. For laying a metalled road, the villagers were supposed to transfer the land to the Rural Development and Panchayats Department, which was to further given to the PWD, he said.

The panchayat department is yet to complete the formalities of swapping the land of Bardar residents with that of Tanda panchayat land.