Can BJP Ministers really save ‘Suryaputri’ River Tawi from land mafia and greedy babudom?

 AARYAN SHARMA
JAMMU: While BJP legislators were sitting on the opposition benches inside the State legislature, they were very vocal and always tried to corner the ruling dispensation in power over ignoring the plight of ‘Suryaputri’ River Tawi.
The party even exploited emotions of local residents during their election campaigns and raised passions among the voters to elect them to the seat of power to remove the rampant encroachment along the Tawi river bed.
The BJP leaders always alleged that the successive State Governments allowed the deep rooted nexus between the land grabbers and some revenue officials to mushroom in order to consolidate their grip over their electorate in the region.
Due to their negligence huge unauthorized colonies have come up on both sides of River Tawi from Sidhra Bridge to Nikki Tawi Bridge with the active connivance of officers and officials of the Revenue Department, Irrigation and Flood Control Department, PWD, Jammu Development Authority and Jammu Municipal Corporation besides other instrumentalities of the State.
Since majority of land grabbers enjoyed patronage of political leaders cutting across different political parties even the State government agencies failed to take any strict action against the land grabbers over a long period of time.
Successive interventions by the Court of law at the highest level also failed to make changes on ground zero. Vested interest among the State bureaucracy and others in the State machinery occupying key positions have been simply passing the buck instead of taking concrete measures to address the issue of rampant encroachment.
With every passing day the situation is now taking ugly turn as large chunks of land have been blatantly allowed to be captured by a section of people and the hands of the concerned agencies have been tied up by their political bosses.
Now the BJP -PDP alliance government is occupying the seat of power for more than one year.
When Mufti Mohd Sayeed was head of the alliance government a certain degree of momentum was generated against the land grabbers and over 900 kanals of land was retrieved from the clutches of the land grabbers and other encroachers but a ground survey across the river bed clearly revealed the same is still going on unabated and no authority seems inclined towards checking and preventing the same.
Various NGO’s and other State government agencies despite expressing serious concern over the issue have failed to create momentum in support of the Save Tawi andolan.
The river Tawi besides facing the serious threat of pollution from different sources is struggling to protect its boundary from the land sharks. Question is can BJP ministers led by Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh can really put their foot down and force the Mehbooba Mufti led alliance government to take decisive action against those illegally occupying State land and polluting the river Tawi.