1,000 acres swallowed by Ravi in Ajnala: MLA Dhaliwal

Around 1,000 acres across 26 villages in Amritsar’s Ajnala have been gobbled up by the Ravi, which had changed it course in recent floods and inundated dozens of villages in the border belt.

This was stated by Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, a former Punjab minister and ruling AAP’s halqa incharge.

According to Dhaliwal, who is also the Ajnala legislator, the worst-hit was Ball Labhe Darya village, where 250 acres were swallowed by the swollen river. He said the land had been lost forever as the river now flowed over it. He demanded a compensation of Rs 20 lakh per acre for affected farmers from the Centre.

Inspecting flood-hit villages, Dhaliwal said the Punjab Government could not provide land as it did not have enough with it.

He added that on July 2, in a meeting with Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti CR Patil in Delhi, he had raised the demand for desilting of the Ravi and for funds to compensate the farmers for land lost in previous floods.

Djaliwal also boarded a motorboat provided by the BSF for the inspection of the destroyed crops across the river. After hearing the farmers’ grievances about sudden surges of water in the river, Dhaliwal said the natural disaster was caused by cloudbursts in the hilly areas, which brought massive amounts of debris, red soil, and silt down to Thein Dam.

“Even engineers found it impossible to issue advance warnings about such sudden flows reaching downstream villages and towns,” he said.

To probe the reasons of breaking down of three floodgates at Madhopur Headworks, the Punjab Government has formed a five-member expert committee of engineers to study the structural, mechanical, hydrological, and geotechnical causes.