Finally, construction work of bridge on Chakki river begins

PATHANKOT: After an arduous wait of nearly seven decades, hundreds of residents belonging to a cluster of 36 villages heaved a sigh of relief after the PWD has started work on a 200-m bridge to come up at a cost of Rs20 crore on the Chakki river.

Pathankot MLA Amit Vij and his father Anil Vij, along with others, during an event organised near the bridge on Friday. Tribune photo

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Pathankot, December 7

After an arduous wait of nearly seven decades, hundreds of residents belonging to a cluster of 36 villages heaved a sigh of relief after the PWD has started work on a 200-m bridge to come up at a cost of Rs20 crore on the Chakki river. It connects Talwandi Jattan to Simbli villages.

The construction of the river had been a long-pending demand of 36 panchayats as residents had to take a detour of nearly 35 km to reach the other side of the river where the Jammu-Pathankot and Amritsar-Pathankot national highways are located.

Balwinder Kumar, a resident of Talwandi Jattan, said villagers had given several representations to former MPs Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder and Vinod Khanna. “However apart from making tall promises, nothing concrete had been done. We had to waste a lot of time traversing 35 km to reach the other side of the river. Now, the distance will be just two km once the bridge is ready within six months. Even Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa, during the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha polls, had assured us that work will begin soon, but nothing concrete happened,” he added.

Pathankot MLA Amit Vij, who is making efforts to bring industrial units on both sides of the Chakki river, took up cudgels on behalf of the beleaguered villagers. His father Anil Vij, who is the president of the Pathankot District Congress Committee, asked the villagers to pass a unanimous resolution seeking the construction of the passage.

He took the resolution to Gurdaspur MP Sunil Jakhar who, in turn, sought the intervention of Chief Minister Capt Aamrinder Singh. The CM spoke to the PWD authorities who prepared an estimate, which was then approved by the authorities concerned. Thereafter, the work started on Friday.

Incidentally, Sunil Jakhar, in the run-up to the 2017 Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll, had promised to take up the issue.

“Industrialists told me that they are willing to set up cottage and small scale industries on both sides of the river only if a link is established. The bridge will bring in economic prosperity apart from reducing the distance considerably,” said the MLA.