With Jammu reeling under massive floods, PDP supremo and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Thursday said that large-scale destruction of forests and hills was behind the recent heavy rain, cloudbursts and flash floods in the region and alleged that the Central government was “handing over our forests, mountains, rivers and nullahs to private contractors just for peanuts’’.
She demanded a comprehensive relief and rehabilitation package from the Centre for rebuilding lives destroyed in the floods in Jammu province and termed the allocation of Rs 209 crore by the Centre as insufficient given the widespread destruction.
After visiting various flood-hit areas of Jammu, Mufti alleged that the contractors were “felling lakhs of trees in the name of development — construction of a four-lane road or a tunnel. While constructing a tunnel, you dig out earth and in the process spring water also comes out, rendering the hills hollow”.
It is good to promote tourism and religious tourism, she said, but these need to be regulated.
“They have made so many roads for Char Dham and of them, two Dhams are closed today because the contractors have destroyed our forests,’’ she said, urging the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognizance of the large-scale destruction in Himalayan region.
“This is an environmental disaster and today, Punjab too is facing the brunt,’’ she said. As rain pounded Punjab, the death toll rose to 37 on Thursday.
“Cloudbursts, flash floods will not stop as we ourselves destroyed our environment and pushed the future generations also towards disaster,” she said.
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Mufti said big projects, including construction of six lane roads and tunnels, are initiated “where there is no need and where these are needed, they wouldn’t take those up”. “They do not make a tunnel on the Mughal Road or the Sinthan Top which will ease pressure of vehicles on the present Jammu-Srinagar NH, but they will make small tunnels at the cost of our ecology as these get them money,” she said.
No one checks the environmental clearance as it is the government’s budget and the contractor has paid the money, she alleged.
She alleged that Chenab Valley (where work on various mega hydel power projects is underway) has become a “well of death’’, adding, “I don’t think it will be worth living after 10-15 years’’.
