Tarigami urges Centre to come forward to help flood-affected J&K

Srinagar, Sep 05: CPI(M) leader and MLA Kulgam M Y Tarigami Friday urged the Centre to come forward and assist the Jammu and Kashmir government by providing adequate funds for relief and rehabilitation of the flood-affected people in the Union Territory.

Addressing a press conference, Tarigami, who is the chairman of the Environment Committee, J-K Legislative Assembly, said that the impact of the current spell of floods in Jammu and Kashmir has been extremely devastating as far as the losses of properties and human lives are concerned.

"We urge the government of India to come forward and assist the J&K government by providing adequate funds for relief and rehabilitation of all those who have suffered huge losses," he said.

Tarigami said people in the Himalayan belt from Uttarakhand to Himachal Pradesh and J-K have faced devastating floods.

The people of Punjab have also met with huge devastation because of the floods. We express our deepest solidarity with all those who have lost their dear ones and also those who have lost their properties during the current deluge, he said.

"This is an immense human tragedy of big proportions affecting thousands of villages and towns. The floods of 2014 were a warning. Had we drawn lessons from that unfortunate tragedy, we could have minimised the devastation of the 2025 floods," he said.

The Kulgam MLA said, "The fact remains that our track record on conducting environmental impact assessments (EIA), which is an essential pre-requisite before any major project is conceived and implemented, is almost minimal... The EIA is mandatory for any project, especially in environmentally fragile areas. Unfortunately, in most cases, this is either violated or compromised."

The Union government's utter lack of intent and concern is "laid bare" in the fact that they are yet to set up a dedicated Climate Disaster Relief Fund, aimed at providing non-repayment aid to states during emergencies and ensuring sustained support in the aftermath of disasters, Tarigami said.

With more and more states facing the vagaries of nature, the creation of such a fund needs immediate attention, he said.

The CPI(M) leader said the 1962 Jhelum capacity of 63,000 cusecs has halved due to heavy silting, and restoring it requires a massive, coordinated and ecological-friendly dredging operation of the main river, its tributaries, distributaries and receiving basins to reclaim lost volume and prevent future flooding.

He called for an immediate, transparent and third-party safety audit of all public infrastructure, including dams and bridges, to identify culpability and fix responsibility.

The land mafia and encroachers must be given exemplary punishment, he said.

He also called for a thorough investigation into the dredging works allotted to a company for Wuller Lake, Hokarsar and Jhelum.

The details of the progress made for the drudging of these wet lands must be made public.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) is said to have registered an FIR in this connection. This needs to be thoroughly investigated, he said, demanding that the details of the wetlands which have vanished since 2015 be made public.