Ghaggar water inundates border outposts

From The Tribune

Raj Sadosh

Sriganganagar, August 3
The border outposts (BoPs) identified as Laila-Majnu, Binjaur and Kailash in the Anoopgarh sector have been inundated by Ghaggar waters, making it a challenging task for the Border Security Force (BSF) to a keep vigil on the international border.

The BSF men have made temporary arrangements to keep vigil on the Indo-Pak border in the Anoopgarh sector in Rajasthan.

Even as the BSF men have acquired boats and raised temporary platforms using wooden sleepers and iron-sheets to perform their duty, it is feared that ensuring electricity supply to the floodlights might be a challenging task since the poles as well as wired fencing was facing threat from 4-5 feet deep water that accumulated during the past 24 hours.
However, official sources said that vigil would further be intensified not only to ensure safety of the fencing and lights but also to check infiltration bids from across the Zero Line.
Local farmers said thousands of acres of the agricultural land could have been irrigated on this side of the border, had the authorities made efforts to control the gushing Ghaggar water that is now flowing over to the Pakistan side of border.
The neighbouring country on such occasions in the past succeeded in utilising incoming water for irrigating the cotton fields in the Bahawalpur district.
Intriguingly, the neighbouring country had demanded compensation from the Government of India lamenting that the Ghaggar water had caused heavy damage to the standing crops besides residential areas in its territory..
Anoopgarh residents including Pankaj Ojha and Narinder Bhojak said hundreds of hectares of land in Anoopgarh, Rawla, 365 head and Gharsana areas in the Sriganganagar district needs canal water for cotton and other crops but there had been no initiative by the irrigation department to divert the Ghaggar water to the canal system of the region.