By Asia Samachar | Panjab |
Panjab is battling the worst floods since the 1988 devastation, with 300,000 acres of farmland already damaged and 1,018 villages under water.
As many as 11,300 people have been rescued and 4,700 evacuated from flooded homes and villages.
The Sutlej, Beas and Ravi rivers are in spate following heavy rain in their catchment areas in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Floodwaters have caused widespread destruction in Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Ferozepur, Pathankot, Fazilka, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur districts, reported Tribune News Network.
The current floods have devastated Panjab on both sides of the India-Pakistan border.
Nearly half a million people have been displaced by flooding in eastern Pakistan after days of heavy rain swelled rivers, relief officials said, as they carried out a massive rescue operation.
Three transboundary rivers that cut through Punjab province, which borders India, have swollen to exceptionally high levels, affecting more than 2,300 villages, reported Al Jazeera.
On the Indian side, TNN reported that the state has suffered significant financial losses due to crop damage, with preliminary reports indicating that over 41,099 acres of farmland has been affected in the border district of Fazilka alone. Other districts like Ferozepur, Kapurthala, Pathankot, and Hoshiarpur have also reported thousands of hectares of damaged agri land, the report added.
In Chandigarh, Panjab’s water resources minister Barinder Kumar Goyal has criticised the central government holding it responsible for worsening the state’s worst flood disaster in the past 37 years.
Goyal told a press conference at Punjab Bhawan that the timely release of water by the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) in June, for which repeated requests were made, could have significantly reduced the damage caused by the floods, reported the Hindustan Times.
He highlighted a troubling contradiction, pointing out that while Haryana sent letters offering assistance, it simultaneously reduced its water share during this monsoon — from 7,900 cusecs to 6,250 cusecs — in order to protect its own canal systems, thus leaving Punjab to fend for itself.
Goyal alleged that a private company, “Level 19 Biz Private Limited,” which had been hired in 2024 to assess the structural strength of the Madhopur headworks gates, had incorrectly certified them to withstand up to 6.25 lakh cusecs of water. However, the gates failed under pressure, collapsing and leading to the tragic death of a department employee, according to the report.
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