Jahangeer Ganaie
Srinagar, Feb 8: The 40 metre widening of river Jhelum for about 19 kilometres in North Kashmir is likely to take time as it requires acquisition of land and structures, Officials said Wednesday.
A top official of irrigation and flood control department said that the 40 metre widening of the river Jhelum is to be done from Nigli Sopore to Khanpora bridge in Baramulla which is around 19 kilometres.
“To start work, we need demarcation as we need acquisition of land and structures as it is touching Sopore town at some spots and some other habitations,” he said. “Demarcation process with the revenue department has been started following which an assessment process about the land and structures to be required for acquisition will be carried out.”
He said that at some spots, the official said that there is government land which needs to be acquired and for what we will seek directions from concerned authorities.
“Demarcation process is parallelly on and as per initial assessment, land and structure acquisition will cost around 3,00 crore,” he said. “Once the demarcation process along with assessment work will be completed, the widening work of 40 metres for about 19 kilometres costing around Rs 500 crore will be tendered out.”
He said that widening of river Jhelum in North Kashmir is one of the main work of the flood mitigation plan phase 2 as widening work along acquisition is expected to cost around Rs 750-800 crore.
He said that works costing around Rs 340 crore which are part of phase second have been tendered out and work is expected to start soon.
“With the completion of phase 1 the capacity of river Jhelum will go to 60,000 cusecs, which has been already taken to 40,000 in the phase 1,” he said.
He said that the deadline to complete the phase 2 is three years and hopefully it will be completed in three years time.
Notably, Flood Management Plan was divided into two phases, phase 1 was funded under the Prime Minister’s Development Package with a budget of Rs 399 crore, which included spot dredging as per requirement to increase the capacity of river Jhelum so as to minimize the damage if there will be floods again.
Soon after floods in 2014, the government of India had constituted a committee to suggest measures to prevent such calamities in the future.
The committee in its report had recommended several long term measures including additional supplementary flood spill channel, creation of storage facilities on tributaries of Jhelum, flood plain zoning and enhancing capacity of Wular Lake.
