Ambala, Kurukshetra saw deadly floods, farm protests; shooters won Asiad medals

Nitish Sharma

Ambala & Kurukshetra, Dec 30

In the year, Ambala and Kurukshetra will be largely remembered for floods that wreaked havoc and protests held by farm activists.

Crops on thousands of acres were damaged by the floods in July, and residential colonies remained waterlogged for days due to incessant rain, overflowing rivers and breaches along rivers including Ghaggar, Markanda, SYL, Narwana branch, and Tangri.

Teams of NDRF and Army, besides the local police conducted rescue operations and people who were stranded in the waterlogged villages and colonies were evacuated.

The water left a trail of large-scale damage in the agricultural fields, residential colonies, industrial areas and schools.

In Kurukshetra, farmers had to hold repeated agitations and block the National Highway to sell their sunflower seeds. Thousands of quintals of sunflower seeds were lying in the grain market but only a few hundred quintals were available for sale just because the Haryana government and the sunflower farmers were at the loggerheads over the price of sale of the oilseeds for marketing season 2023-24.

The farmers in both districts continued to hold demonstrations over various issues including stray cattle, compensation, mustarka malkan, Naraingarh sugar mills and MSP throughout the year.

The Ambala district again came to focus for the wrong reasons such as preparing spurious liquor that claimed 20 lives in Yamunanagar and Ambala. The incident also revealed how easy it was for some criminals to arrange all the ingredients and prepare the liquor by watching some tutorials on social media.

Besides this, a joint team of the Haryana Food and Drug administration and Ambala police unearthed an illegal unit preparing anabolic steroids and health supplements in Ambala, revealing how a few people were preparing counterfeit drugs just to earn some money.

Some burglars also broke into the Ambala Central Cooperative Bank Ltd, cut open lockers and decamped with jewellery and other valuables items. However the police have arrested prime accused in the case and the recoveries are also being made, it exposed the lack of attention being paid to security in some the banks.

The year also brought some good news. The 19-year-old Ramita Jindal from Ladwa in Kurukshetra clinched an individual bronze in the 10m air rifle event besides being a part of the three-member women’s team that bagged a sliver in the Asian Games at Hangzhou in China.

Ambala’s Sarabjot Singh (22), from Dheen village, won a gold in 10m air pistol men’s team event along with Shiva Narwal and Arjun Singh Cheema in the Asian Games in China and a silver in mixed team event in China.

Meanwhile, the civic bodies continued to test patience of residents as people faced difficulties in getting NDCs, NOCs and rectifying property IDs. A long pending project of setting up a civil enclave to start domestic flights from Ambala was cleared. The government and the Kurukshetra Development Board are coming out with several projects to boost tourism in the area.