Long will be the people made to suffer the consequences of the floods that struck Kashmir in 2014? By any logic, the havoc wrought by that natural calamity should have been alleviated by now and people provided the opportunity of living normal life. At least the people of Zainapora in South Kashmir’s Shopian district have not found an end to their difficulties caused by the outright destruction of the bridge over the Tongri Nullah. The bridge was washed away by 2014 floods.
The 45 meters long bridge connecting Shopian with Bijbehara is scheduled to be rebuilt under flood damaged infrastructure (Flood Bridges). Three years have gone by and the bridge is yet to be rebuilt. Does anybody care to understand what difficulty the local people are encountering in reaching the National Highway? The Rs 398.96 lakhs project of building a bridge of just 45 meters is not a big enough to take three years and still remain incomplete.
We learn that actually there are other problems that have caused inordinate delay in bringing the bridge to completion. There has been dispute over land acquisition, a phenomenon which is very common in most of the projects in the State and secondly the high tension wire passing over the bridge has also caused delay in getting it removed from the site. Apart from this the R&B Department has brought forth another reason for delay and that is the unrest in South Kashmir during the year 2016, which had made the movement of men and material difficult. We do not think that any of these reasons should have delayed the completion of the bridge for such a long time. Land acquisition disputes go on and do not stop initializing work on the projects. Relocation of high tension wire should not be that time consuming and the disturbances of 2016 did not specifically target this project. In any case, let us hope that the bridge will be rebuilt and handed over by March 2018 timeline as stated by the concerned authority.
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