Unelectrified village Wandaji in Kupwara votes for power supply connectivity

Kupwara, Oct 1: Ali Mohammad, a sixty-year-old man from Wandaji Budnamal, a remote village in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, arrived early Tuesday morning at the polling station set up at Government High School Budnamal to cast his vote, hoping to see electricity in his village.

While recounting the hardships caused by the lack of electricity, Ali Mohammad said that more than one hundred households have been left without power. “We still rely on conventional means to light our homes after sunset. We use oily wood (‘Leish’ in Kashmiri) for lighting, which adversely affects our health because it produces heavy smoke,” he added.

Students and elderly people bear the brunt of the electricity shortage in Wandaji. “I have developed a serious chest condition due to the heavy smoke produced by the wood over the years, and the same is true for other elderly residents in our village. I have to visit the District Hospital in Handwara every fortnight for treatment, which costs me over Rs 3,000. I want to ask the authorities why our village has been left unelectrified,” said another resident after casting his vote.

“The Budnamal area used to suffer a lot due to the lack of electricity, but two years ago, our joy knew no bounds when our neighboring villages finally received power. We were told that the entire Budnamal area would be covered under a centrally sponsored scheme, but later Wandaji hamlet was excluded for reasons best known to the authorities,” he added.

The people of Wandaji hope that their representative will address their long-pending issue so that the hardships they face can come to an end.