Pulwama residents fear loss of livelihood in railway land acquisition

Pulwama, Nov 20: On Wednesday afternoon, a group of residents in Monghama village, 2 kms from  Pulwama town, gathered at a village square to protest against a railway line cutting through the area.

Most of the residents in the village, comprising 300 households, live off the land. However, the construction of a railway line through their village  will threaten their livelihood.

“I will be left with no farmland if the railway line is laid through the village”, said Javed Ahmad, a resident.

In neighbouring Babhar village, around six kilometres away, another  group of residents protested against the laying of railway through their village.

The resident said they owned only small parcels of land, and if these were taken away for the railway project, they would be forced to live a nomadic life, stripped of stability and livelihood.

According to the residents, some  officials, on Tuesday, showed up in the village to carry out a  survey for the construction of a railway line, linking Awantipora with Shopian.

In December 2023, Union Minister Ashwani Kumar informed the parliament that the Final Location Survey of five lines had been sanctioned in Jammu and Kashmir. The lines include a doubling of the Baramulla-Banihal section (135.5 kilometres), Baramulla-Uri (50 kilometres), Sopore-Kupwara (33.7 kilometres), Awantipora-Shopian (27.6 kilometres) and Anantnag-Bijbehara-Pahalgam (77.5 kilometres).

The actual survey has left the residents distressed as they began fearing  for their livelihood.

“My orchard is the only source of my livelihood. This  railroad will leave me without a means to support my family”, said another resident.

With frustration evident on his face, Abdul Ahad Rather, a wiry resident said that the village had already suffered immensely due to different  government projects that took away large tracts of their farmland in the past.

“Over the last many years, the government took our land  for building  transmission towers and other big ticket road projects . Now they are surveying to run a rail line through this village”, he said.

The residents demanded rerouting of  railroad through nearby Romshoo Nullah.