Current Matters
Jammu, September 30: Tall claims are being made about the unprecedented infrastructural development in Udhampur-Kathua-Doda Parliamentary Constituency. Large hoardings and big advertisements, apart from repeated statements, in public domain have become a routine affair but things seem to be quite different on ground. An impression has been given that the constituency is the best ever connected in the country and it has seen tremendous development in the last nine years. Recently, there were some media reports wherein a single road exposed all the claims of the government and concerned politicians. Reason: 26 years might be a short period for the Public Works Department of Jammu and Kashmir to complete just four-kilometer road in remote Bani tehsil of Kathua district. Bani is the part of Udhampur-Kathua-Doda parliamentary constituency where the people are still craving for good road connectivity. A single journey on Lowang main road to Bhag in tehsil Bani is enough to gauge the hollowness of tall claims made by the successive regimes about good and effective governance as the road has now been virtually abandoned. Construction work on the road was started in 1997-98. The work of four-kilometer-long link road was to be executed under district plan with an estimated cost of Rs 449.75 lakh. Later, it was proposed that the project would be completed under Prime Minister Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY) but it remained in papers only. Currently, the road is in bad shape as little effort has been made over the years to complete this project. What is more distressing for the local populace is that the officials concerned gave ‘lame excuses to save their skin’. Anger is brewing among the locals against the administration as they asked whether this is the model of good governance. A road length of just 4-km has not been completed in 26 years despite the fact that it is directly affecting the day-to-day life of people of 3-4 villages. Where is the accountability? Out of four-kilometer length authorities concerned undertook construction work on just one-kilometer that too without any protection or side wall over these years. The need is to fix the responsibility for this negligence. Officials concerned should be held accountable and punitive action must be initiated against them for their gross negligence. It also calls for a high-level inquiry into the matter and fix the responsibility. The worst affected are young children, ailing people and aged persons who are forced to talk or travel on potholed and dilapidated road. The officials concerned, however, claimed that construction work could not be completed because locals created hurdles in its execution– a statement that has been outrightly rejected by the locals. They argue that there is a proposal of compensation to the affected people due to construction of any road under PMGSY but there had been no provision of compensation payment to the affected persons under District Plan which brought the project to a grinding halt. Whatever be the circumstances, the administration should order a probe into the matter to restore the dwindling faith of the local people in the administrative setup. It should also expedite the process of completing the road which has been left unattended for the last two decades.
