Month on, ring bundh breach at Aahli Khurd plugged

A month since the video of the sarpanch of Aahli Khurd had gone viral wherein he was seen crying standing along a ring bundh which had just breached, a team of Rajya Sabha MP Balbir Singh Seechewal and volunteers have managed to get it plugged on Tuesday.

The 750-m long breach had developed on the ring bundh which had destroyed paddy on about 30,000 acres in the Baupur Mand area of Sultanpur Lodhi. With the completion of the bundh, the flow of Beas into the fields has been stopped.

Shamsher Singh, sarpanch of the village, said, "It was on August 24 that the bundh had developed a breach. People from the area had been working hard since July to protect it. When it breached on the morning of August 24, the farmers, who had been struggling to save it, were left heartbroken. The video of the breach spread so rapidly that messages of sympathy started pouring in not just from Punjab, but also from across the world. Without waiting for any official help, people began bringing trolleys of soil to fill the breach. A large amount of earth had been collected near the gurdwara of Aahli Kalan."

Shamsher Singh and Ranjit Singh said it had brought them a huge relief as the ring bundh had been completed. To reach the breached point, a large amount of earth had to be placed along the routes to make access easier.

They said the teams of Avtar Singh, head sevadar of Sampardai Dal Baba Bidhi Chand, Baba Sukha Singh of Sarhali and Seechewal, the people of Aahli Kalan, Ahli Khurd, and other villages of the mand region played an active role in this effort.

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Box: Tractors needed to clean fields

MP Balbir Seechewal stated that the broken ring bundh at Aahli Kalan was the second bundh out of the eight breached embankments in Baupur to have been plugged. He said efforts to plug the remaining breaches would soon begin. He further explained that the biggest challenge is removing the 3 to 4 feet of silt deposited in farmers’ fields. Seechewal appealed to the people to come with tractors and diesel and help farmers remove silt and make their fields cultivable.