VIJAY DEO JHA
Ranchi, March 16: The demand for a Ganga River police station in Sahebganj district is gaining ground after BJP’s Rajmahal MLA Anant Ojha raised this issue during the budget session of the assembly on Monday last.
Responding on behalf of the government, Rural Development Minister Alamgir Alam said that the proposal of a river police station was under consideration at the police headquarters. He assured to set up the police station for boat policing. But he was upset and said that the BJP MLA who raised this matter during the previous assembly session also was more interested in politicizing it and making it a controversial issue.
The Ganga River covers a distance of 83.15 km in Sahebganj and the district is not far from Bangladesh. The Ganga has whimsical contours, it swishes through three states — entering Sahebganj (Jharkhand) from Manihari in Katihar (Bihar), negotiating Rajmahal (again, Jharkhand), and then going to Farakka and Manichak in Malda (all in Bengal).
Illegal Bangladeshi immigration has been an issue in Sahebganj and the BJP prominently raised this matter. Anant Ojha has been the product of the anti-illegal immigration agitation. But the opposition accused the BJP of playing a communal card.
“Illegal Bangladeshi settlement is a reality that none can deny. Here the issue is whether the demand I raised is justified or not from the law-and-order point of view. We can’t be conveniently blind and deaf towards the emerging threat. The riverine belt of Ganga forms a trijunction of three states and it has become a battlefield of gang lords. Only a few days back a heavy encounter was reported,” said Anant Ojha.
“Other than the holy water, so many things are flowing through the Ganga that the government needs to check. It has become a route of narcotics smuggling. A huge consignment of the heroin was confiscated in Kolkata which was ferried through Ganga. Udhwa is close to the international border,” he said.
Due to some reasons, Sahebganj worried intelligence agencies as it emerged as a hideout of suspected terrorists of Bangladesh where the illegal activities of Fake Indian Currency Notes had proliferated.
Anant Ojha said that river policing was required in the changed scenario as the district is emerging on the national and international map as an important trade route.
On September 12, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s second riverine Multi-Modal terminal built at Sahebganj. Built at a cost of Rs 290 crores, Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the multimodal terminal in April 2017, a project of Inland Waterways Authority of India. This was the second of the three Multi-Modal Terminals constructed on the river Ganga under Jal Marg Vikas Project.
The Multi-Modal terminal at Sahebganj can connect Jharkhand with the global market and provide Indo-Nepal cargo connectivity through the route of the waterway. The multi-Modal terminal has connected the district to Kolkata, Haldia, and further to the Bay of Bengal besides the North-East States through Bangladesh by the river-sea route.
