M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, May 28: Union Minister of Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat recently held a review meeting of the North Koel Water Reservoir Project called Mandal dam in Delhi.
The review meeting was in respect of the progress of the Mandal dam while in reality, it remains a dam of inaction.
Two BJP MPs of Jharkhand named Sunil Kumar Singh (Chatra) and V D Ram (Palamu), and one BJP MP from Bihar named Sushil Singh (Aurangabad, Bihar) met the minister and apprised him regarding the Mandal dam which is in limbo. It is an interstate irrigational dam between Jharkhand and Bihar.
Chatra MP Sunil Kumar Singh speaking to this correspondent said, “We are determined and committed to making this dam operational by 2024. We have urged the minister concerned about it. The minister has spurred his officials and agency to speed up work for the dam.”
The Chatra MP said issues of the Mohammadganj barrage, right canal, left canal, quality of canals, setting up of police picket at the dam site and big of all compensation for the villages that face imminent submergence once the dam gets operational were discussed at length with minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and his team of senior officers drawn also from the central water commission.
“We found the Bihar government is pretty co-operative in the canal works of this barrage there,” he added.
However, sources said never in the last 10 years or more, the user agency of the Mandal dam i.e. the water resources department or irrigation department or its chief engineer sitting in Daltonganj has ever taken pains to hold any press briefing over the Mandal dam. As a result, information regarding the Mandal dam is either overplayed or underplayed leading to an atmosphere of distrust and doubt between the villagers around the dam and the irrigation department.
It is a fact that the chief engineer of the water resources department sitting in Daltonganj, for any information about the Mandal dam, asks one to contact the Webcos company officials and this company refuses to speak to media saying the old tune ‘not authorised to speak.’
“Why is this veil of secrecy around this dam?” ask the tribals whose 95 percent population faces imminent submergence and displacement in seven villages while five more villages are to bear the brunt of the dam water differently.
Media and villagers both urge the Chatra MP Sunil Kumar Singh to direct the chief engineer irrigation department Daltonganj to come up with the updates on the Mandal dam sooner than later as the more this department withholds information the more it causes harm to the future and fate of the dam.
Tribals suspect they will be displaced and their resettlement will not be done. Sources said there are forces around that want this Mandal dam to remain as it is for their own vested interests.
According to sources, a new canard has been floated that tribals are opposed to this dam which is far from the truth. They only want a concrete package for their resettlement.
The Chatra BJP MP sets 2024 as the year of the operation of the Mandal dam for the obvious reasons of the General Election in that year. But the ground reality is that in more than 3 years, the basic ‘testing of the material of more than four decades old Mandal dam’ has not been done to date.
The material test of the dam is essential to find out if this 40 years non-functional dam still has the ‘strength of the structure’ or has the weather, season and climate made it fragile.
On January 5, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Daltonganj and had then set a 3-year term for the Mandal dam to get operational. But it continues to be as a non-starter as it was in its many decades. The Mandal dam continues to drag on and on.
As this dam comes under the Latehar district, which is a segment of the Chatra Lok Sabha seat, its MP Sunil Kumar Singh owes much to take people into confidence regarding the dam.