- News>
- Newspapers
Swirling Ganga fails to drown people`s cry for help: The Pioneer
Kolkata, Aug 21: Catastrophe is a trivial word to qualify the impact of a berserk Ganga eating away villages in the Malda district. The swirling river is playing havoc in Kaliachak II block inundating vast tracts of productive land and displacing over 15,000 people. locals have blamed the Government and threatened to move court against the inaction of the State Irrigation Department.
Kolkata, Aug 21: Catastrophe is a trivial word to qualify the impact of a berserk Ganga eating away villages in the Malda district. The swirling river is playing havoc in Kaliachak II block inundating vast tracts of productive land and displacing over 15,000 people. locals have blamed the Government and threatened to move court against the inaction of the State Irrigation Department.
Over the last couple of days the river has gobbled up bustling hamlets of Hazaritola, Nasrattola, Jahantola, said Malda District Magistrate Ashok Bala. Nearly 1,200 families have been shifted from Sakullapur and Jotkari villages by the Government whereas locals at Panchanandpur, Aladitola and Vestpara have retreated to safer areas on their own.
According to a senior Irrigation Department official in Kolkata, over 3,500 people could have been rendered homeless and the picture will be clear only after Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta and Irrigation Minister Amalendra Chowdhury return from an on-the-spot survey.
The Ministers who have left for Malda have taken the riverine route to the affected villages from the district headquarters, sources said. This was done in order to avert the tumultuous crowds baying for the Government's blood. The Ministers were reportedly alerted by the district administration to avoid the land route in order to play it safe even as unofficial sources put the number of the people affected by the last weeks erosion to 15,000.
Ganga Bhangon Pratirodh Committee leader Tarikul Islam, said: "We are asking the homeless families to send at least a thousand postcards to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court. The Government has been doing nothing." Things took an ugly turn in Malda after Ganga mingled with another river, Pagla, near Panchandapur. While, Pagla is a small river and its merging with Ganga is likely to affect only limited areas, a similar disaster in the nearby district of Murshidabad may spell a doom for a large part of the State and even Bagladesh, Irrigation Department officials felt.
Padma, the main branch of Ganga which flows into Bangladesh after forming an international riverine boundary between the two countries, is menacingly charging at Bhagirathi, the second branch of the Ganga. Bhagirathi becomes Hooghly near Kolkata and empties itself at Ganga Sagar. At Jalangi in Murshidabad the two rivers, which even a few years ago were at a distance of 25 kms from each other, are separated by a narrow strip of only 2.5 km, a Department official said, adding, unless the adequate money is pumped in to tame the unruly rivers the whole region may submerge.
While, erosion is a century-old problem mainly plaguing the twin districts of Malda and Murshidabad - a host of villages have been lost to Bangladesh due to a course-changing Ganga - the State Government has washed its hands off the problem owing to fund crunch. Incidentally, the Panchayat votes in Murshidabad were this time fought primarily on erosion as the main issue. The triumph of the Congress in Murshidabad has led the political bells to toll violently at the Writers Buildings with none other than Mr Dasgupta being sent to Malda to save the Left vote from erosion in the next general polls.
The Ministers who have left for Malda have taken the riverine route to the affected villages from the district headquarters, sources said. This was done in order to avert the tumultuous crowds baying for the Government's blood. The Ministers were reportedly alerted by the district administration to avoid the land route in order to play it safe even as unofficial sources put the number of the people affected by the last weeks erosion to 15,000.
Ganga Bhangon Pratirodh Committee leader Tarikul Islam, said: "We are asking the homeless families to send at least a thousand postcards to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court. The Government has been doing nothing." Things took an ugly turn in Malda after Ganga mingled with another river, Pagla, near Panchandapur. While, Pagla is a small river and its merging with Ganga is likely to affect only limited areas, a similar disaster in the nearby district of Murshidabad may spell a doom for a large part of the State and even Bagladesh, Irrigation Department officials felt.
Padma, the main branch of Ganga which flows into Bangladesh after forming an international riverine boundary between the two countries, is menacingly charging at Bhagirathi, the second branch of the Ganga. Bhagirathi becomes Hooghly near Kolkata and empties itself at Ganga Sagar. At Jalangi in Murshidabad the two rivers, which even a few years ago were at a distance of 25 kms from each other, are separated by a narrow strip of only 2.5 km, a Department official said, adding, unless the adequate money is pumped in to tame the unruly rivers the whole region may submerge.
While, erosion is a century-old problem mainly plaguing the twin districts of Malda and Murshidabad - a host of villages have been lost to Bangladesh due to a course-changing Ganga - the State Government has washed its hands off the problem owing to fund crunch. Incidentally, the Panchayat votes in Murshidabad were this time fought primarily on erosion as the main issue. The triumph of the Congress in Murshidabad has led the political bells to toll violently at the Writers Buildings with none other than Mr Dasgupta being sent to Malda to save the Left vote from erosion in the next general polls.