State Government was the first to be submerged by J&K floods Early Times Report SRINAGAR, Although historical records prove the flood of 2014 has been the worst recorded flood in Jammu and Kashmir after the one that hit the Valley in 1893, yet there are questions that the State Government cannot escape answering because a natural calamity of such a huge magnitude has struck the state. The flood waters those entered the summer capital Srinagar virtually from all sides on the intervening night of September 6 and 7 did not only submerge commercial and densely populated residential areas, but also submerged the State Government that took more than four days to even announce that it still existed. All the important installations, administrative offices and even the residences of top most bureaucrats and police officers and the Ministers were inundated with such fury and quickness that all these people who constitute the state administration barely managed to escape in the clothes they were wearing. What can be more shocking that a Cabinet Minister sendng SOS messages to his own Government through the local radio station. Although the local MET gave flood warning well in advance, the Government still claimed it had been taken unawares. The Jhelum River had swollen in anger and washed away everything that had taken a lifetime of the people of the Valley to gather. While officially it is said just 82 people lost their lives, the fact that this flood has destroyed the livelihood if thousands of people cannot be undermined by any count. There has been no flood prevention measure in the Valley during the last three decades and even more. Till late 1960s there used to be regular dredging of the river bed right from Baramulla to Srinagar city. It was because of this understanding of the dangers that floods posed to the Valley that a dredging division was formed which is still existing with its offices in Baramulla district. For more than 54 years there has been no dredging in River Jhelum. The result has been that the river bed has risen because of silt and sand settlement. The State Government has been so oblivious of its responsibility that some of its multiple-crore infrastructure building has over the years taken place in areas those have histrionic ally been prone to both unprecedented and even seasonal floods. This insults the Jhelum a Valley hospital and medical college, the state Haj House, the JK Bose complex, the State Motor Garages and also the land records office in Bemina. All these offices and buildings including the residential and commercial structures were submerged by flood waters. The State Government has failed completely to even identify with the people during these floods. No doubt the Chief minister Omar Abdullah has been individually trying to put together hid administration desperately during and after the floods. But there is no escaping the fact that the failure of the Government is the failure of the Chief Minister.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 06:54:43 +0000
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