Abrar A. Mattoo
SRINAGAR : Suya Pandit is one of the earlier individuals in Kashmir, or perhaps in the course of history itself, who came up with a concept of waterbody dredging. His ingenious method of tossing the gold coins into the water to prompt the people to take up dredging work and save the Kashmir valley from floods is part of our folklore.
However, post-September 7, 2014 deluge, given the anxiety and repeated flood scares that the people of Kashmir have encountered in the past seven years, Kashmir, or Srinagar in particular, has constantly yearned for another Suya Pandit.
It has been almost seven years since the disastrous floods wreaked havoc in the Kashmir valley on 7 September 2014. Since then, whenever it rains, anxiety grips the mind in Kashmir. The loss that was suffered at that time has laid a solid plinth of anxiety and insecurity on the bedrock of people’s minds.
Murtaza Ahmad is a garment shop owner at the city center Lal-Chowk. His shop was immersed in the waters during Sept 7, floods in 2014. While speaking with Kashmir Despatch he said that he is still struggling to recuperate from the losses suffered during the floods.
“The relief and rehabilitation money provided by the government was not sufficient even to replace the lights in my shop,” Murtaza added.
In the year 2017, the controller and Auditor General pointed out that 25 percent (Rs 342.43 crore) from Rs. 1,369.16 crore meant for disaster mitigation purposes, was diverted towards ineligible work. Therefore, it can be said that the flood mitigation plan thus far has been going at a snail’s pace in Kashmir.
While speaking with Kashmir Despatch on 23 March 2021, Iftikhar Ahmad Kakroo, the then Chief Engineer department of Irrigation and Flood-control attested to the fears of Kashmir’s residents and said, at the current scenario we may not be able to hold the 2014-like flood for 30 more years.”
While the September 7 floods in 2014 filled the river Jhelum with 1.15 Lakh Cusecs of Water, the current mitigation plans aim to increase the holding capacity of river Jhelum to only 60 thousand Cusecs of water, which also may not be happening any time soon. Since at Rs 399.29 Crores only the relatively smaller and less costly Phase-I of comprehensive flood management program has been partially completed, the Phase II Jhelum Tawi Flood Recovery Project at Rs. 1684 Crores, which is still in the DPR stage may take till the end of this decade to complete at the current speed.
“For the Phase-II of Jhelum Tawi Flood Recovery Project, we are waiting for the funds that central government is supposed to provide under PMDP (Prime Minister’s Development Package),” Mr. Naresh Kumar, Chief Engineer Irrigation and Flood Control said while speaking with Kashmir Despatch.
Pertinently, under Phase-I only 14 lakh cubic square meters of the slit has been dredged out from the river bed, which is 2 lakh cubic square meters less than the actual proposed amount under Phase-I.
Furthermore, the Illegal extraction of sand is also a major concern, which often leads to weakened embankments in the Jhelum — our foremost shield against floods.
Last month, a bund cracked in the Shadipora area of Sumbal, and the authorities say that it resulted from over-exploitation of sand in the area, because while the depth of the river was found to be one and a half meters in neighboring areas of Jhelum, at the sight of the cracked bund, it was found to be eight meters.
“From Sangam to all the way to Asham, I have not provided any NOC to individuals for extraction of sand, because that is all we can do. Independently, we cannot stop the illegal extraction of sand in the Jhelum. It has to be a collective effort,” the top officer of I&FC added further.
The guidelines from the central water commission are clear in this regard that no dredging should take place in the Jhelum river between the two areas of Sangam in Kashmir’s Anantnag District and Asham in Bandipora.
Nevertheless, illegal extraction of sand is rampant in these areas, whereas police are majorly involved in the deep-rooted nexus with the sand mafia. Although this figure could not be verified independently, but various boatmen involved in the sand dredging trade at the spectrum of locations said that they were paying hefty amounts to the police for the extraction of boatloads of sand from the river Jhelum. However, these claims were not verified by the police.
Out of ten districts in Kashmir, Baramulla is the only district where the dredging of sand is allowed, and the Department of Irrigation and Flood Control earns a royalty of Rs. 2 crores on the auction of extracted sand. In the rest of the districts in Kashmir, dredging poses a serious threat to both embankments and the river’s capacity to hold water.
In addition, the individual encroachments are choking the flood-spill channels in Jhelum. Thus far, the administration has failed to completely identify the encroachments in the flood spill channels. Out of Rs 399 crores in the Phase-I, Rs. 140 crores had been allocated for land acquisition of the existing flood channel, and rehabilitation of the traditional residents on the channel.
“You have to bear in mind that we are dealing with a very complex problem. Our teams are very vigilant, they don’t allow any sort of encroachments anymore. Wherever an encroached structure comes up, the demolition follows as soon as possible. However, the encroachments that have taken place in the past are being ascertained as of now, in collaboration with the revenue department and various agencies. The high-court guidelines are clear that once an encroachment is identified in the flood channel, it has to be demolished,” the officer added further.
The officer also blamed the unplanned urbanization of the Srinagar city for flood threats in the future. He said that the modern developers of the city have erred miserably. Theoretically, they had reserved the left bank for the flood spill, and the right for the development. But that didn’t happen, and “we see that Srinagar is a very bad example of urbanization”.
Undoubtedly, according to researchers, Srinagar city is one of the few planned cities in the world that experienced 2014 like a deluge in modern times. In the rest of the world, such a thing is unheard of. Though there are some topological factors like 2 Degree slope in the river Jhelum that pose a serious challenge to flood mitigation plan in Kashmir, but the geologists of the valley have voiced a serious grievance against the Department of Irrigation and Flood control. They say that the department has never sought any scientific advice from them and they could have helped make the flood mitigation plan more comprehensive in Kashmir.
“Two days of downpour should not spell doom for Kashmir. This means that the government should apply a bit of heart while working on human interests projects like Flood Mitigation in Kashmir,” Absar Reyaz Khan, an IAS aspirant said while speaking with Kashmir Despatch.
