Chandigarh, Aug 31 With moderate to heavy rain continuing in Punjab on Sunday, cricketer-turned-politician Harbhajan Singh has apprised Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the grave situation unfolding in the state owing to heavy floods.
“Many villages are severely affected, and countless farmers (kisans) are suffering immense losses as their standing crops have been destroyed. For a state that is known as the food bowl of India, this crisis has left people in distress, without food security and with their livelihoods shattered,” the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s Rajya Sabha MP Singh wrote on X.
At this crucial hour, he said, Punjab “needs the urgent support of the Central government. We appeal for immediate intervention to deploy rescue and relief operations, including the Army and the NDRF, wherever required, provide emergency food supplies, shelter, and medical aid to the affected people and ensure financial and agricultural support for farmers who have lost their crops.”
A day earlier, state Water Resources Minister Barinder Kumar Goyal came down heavily on the Union government, holding it responsible for aggravating Punjab’s worst flood in the last 37 years.
The Minister told the media that the timely release of water by the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) in June could have significantly reduced the devastation.
He lamented that even as lakhs of people in Punjab continue to suffer, the Prime Minister has not made a single statement on the crisis, let alone extend any support to the state.
Raising concern over Haryana’s approach, the Minister alleged that while Haryana, on one hand, sends letters offering help, on the other it has also communicated that Punjab be left to drown by reducing Haryana’s share of water flow during this monsoon from 7,900 cusecs to 6,250 cusecs to protect its canal systems and population, thereby leaving Punjab to its fate.
He said that despite repeated requests, the BBMB failed to release adequate water from dams in June, which could have helped mitigate the impact of floods in Punjab.
Minister Goyal said due to heavy rainfall in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, coupled with the convergence of water from ‘khuds’ and ‘nullahs’ into the regulated discharge from the state’s rivers, Punjab is witnessing one of the most devastating floods in its history, far worse than the catastrophic floods of 1988.
He pointed out that although only 2.15 lakh cusecs of water were released into the Ravi River from the Ranjit Sagar Dam, the additional flow from ‘khuds’ and ‘nullahs’ of adjoining states turned the situation into massive destruction.
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