While Jammu and Kashmir government’s men and machinery are upbeat over retrieving what they call as ‘state land’, the administration’s plans to revive lakes and other vital water bodies in the Kashmir region seem to have hit a stalemate.
In this edition of Sunday Special, the Greater Kashmir, spoke to scores of officials, engineers and other officials associated with the department of lakes, wetlands, irrigation and urban development departments, who say that forget removing existing encroachments on lakes, the district administrative machinery is not even cracking down on potential land-grabbers.
“The inertia could prove costly as lakes and some of the vital water bodies are on deathbed and they could be revived if the government and its various arms act swiftly,” a group of engineers, wishing not to be named, told Greater Kashmir. “We are seeing fresh encroachments happening everywhere along water bodies. But we aren’t concerned about it. We are busy making political statements,” they said, adding “Why does the administration go so soft on encroachments when they occur? If areas under any particular officer, Tehsildar or any engineer, face mass-scale encroachments. The government must look into the deep nexus and try to punish the officials besides the encroachers.”
Flood Furry
After the devastating floods of 2014 in the Kashmir region, we have now been coerced to deliberate and look for solutions for the ever-shrinking area of our water bodies. Much has been discussed since then, and most of us seem to be aware now of the importance of rivers and their tributaries, wetlands, marshes, and bogs to the ecosystem. Soon as we get a day’s rainfall, if not in reality, but virtually the floodgates of such knowledge do open up on social media and we start enlightening everyone. So, I guess I need not discuss it any further here.
However, every now and then we witness some new structures coming up around water bodies, especially on the banks of river Jhelum, Dal Lake or irrigation canals and most of the time we find authorities “impuissant” to stopping the encroachment.
When Violators Know ‘Rule’
In a detailed discussion, scores of the officials and engineers opined that most of the violators know the thumb rule. They say that the violators are “clever” enough and are aware of all the lacunae in the government machinery. Mostly due to the predictability associated with it the violators are well aware to counter any move beforehand. Let us take a simple example of such a typical case to illustrate the actual happenings during the course of such events. For instance, somebody starts construction close to the river bank. What happens is that a field functionary of the department, including an I&FC official, informs the higher-ups (say Junior Engineer) and then the whole staff in the department try to stop the same but the violators don’t adhere citing mostly the excuse that the location being proprietary land, and even if stopped, they resume construction during night hours. After that what happens is that the officer reports the same to the immediate boss till the information reaches the sub-district, the district-level officer who in turn informs the Police, Revenue authorities, and Tehsildar concerned (who are already much preoccupied with routine work) and thus critical time is lost in the process and much more time is further wasted till the Revenue officer seeks report from his subordinates down to the level of a Patwari who thereafter has to visit the site and confirm the details after verifying from land records. Every time such incidents happen by default, or perhaps by compulsion, we need to approach revenue clerks, and patwaris as the records are available with them only and more importantly, very few apart from them have the requisite skill to interpret such maps. By the time this whole exercise is completed, the violator gets ample opportunity to complete the construction of the skeleton of the structure on a war footing basis and after that, it becomes even harder to stop the construction let alone raze it to ground.
Violators’ Counter Narrative
After all the drama, if an employee somehow musters the courage to say anything or stop further construction, he is rather cross-examined with an obvious question “Why were we not stopped till now?”, Where were you before? Have you come to ask for money? Thereafter, carrying out a demolition drive is also a herculean job for the Officer in charge as it again requires the presence of police and revenue officials. It takes a lot of personal effort to arrange such a drive. In the melee, the only thing that happens afterwards is that the illegal structure finds an entry to the burgeoning list of encroachments and the case effectively gets closed. Similar is the chronology with other cases be it encroachment of Government land or encroachment of roads etc. Many such structures have come up on rivers, nullahsetc also during law-and-order situations in the past and it is now a humongous task before the authorities to remove such encroachments. As is popularly known, if treated within golden hours a patient could be saved, on the same analogy if acted within the golden period the encroachments could be stopped at inception. So, what we glean is that our utmost priorities should be to reduce this recurrent exercise of multi-departmental action as much as possible to save precious time and act within the golden period, as it also gives excuses for some unscrupulous elements within the Government machinery whose surreptitious involvement in some cases cannot be ruled out. A simple initiative could be to vest magisterial powers (confined to dealing with such issues only in and around water bodies) with the engineering staff so that they could demolish a structure at its inception without having to wait for an executive magistrate and the Police to be free for carrying such a task. It is not that they are not interested in stopping encroachments, but they must have all the necessary powers to act rather than to write to other departments. It is much better and more convenient for a single department to carry out such an act if it has all the powers and resources required to tackle an encroachment and it would also stop the blame game and fix the whole responsibility to a single department thereby increasing its efficiency. A similar model is prevalent in LCMA and has proved productive to an extent.
Vyeth Roz Pakaan
The group of officials and professionals argue that undoubtedly river Jhelum (known as Vyeth in local parlance) is the elixir of Kashmir. “It is our only panacea for the disposal of surface runoff and Flood mitigation and also directly or indirectly livelihood of a large population depends on this water body. Why can’t there be well-defined boundaries of River Jhelum and other water bodies so that every time any violation is about to happen inside the river body the I&FC department would not require the presence of revenue officials to identify the same,” said Mukhtar Ahmad, an engineer? “It will require only a meagre amount to construct permanent boundary pillars at some fixed intervals for River Jhelum as a pilot project for which returns will be enormous in the long run and the boundaries shall be demarcated once for all and even local populace could identify and inform about any encroachment,” he said, adding “Demarcating boundaries on ground is a must to be taken initiative and should not be delayed any further. This will tremendously contribute to acting within the golden period as explained.”
Engineers As De-Facto Custodians of Water Bodies
Although, engineers have been made de-facto custodians of water bodies which ideally is not their job. However, holding them responsible without giving adequate authority, honestly, is not fair. With the ever-changing world, the laws need to be re-looked upon and since the laws are not divine, but created by us, as such, it needs regular updating to be effective on the ground. One such endeavour by the government towards the cause was enacting the Water Resources Regulation and Management Act (2010). In the act, though some powers have been vested with various engineering field functionaries the same are not being reflected on Ground. The act is effectively redundant on the defenceless ground and the powers vested with various Officers by the act are not being acknowledged even by law enforcement agencies. Most of the time engineers in the department find themselves powerless and defenseless at the same time while dealing with the violators and often they have to face abuses and are manhandled too. Albeit they perform their legitimate duties by informing law enforcement agencies well in time but in the larger interest the process mostly yields cypher. Our primary objective is that any trespassing should not go unnoticed and there should be swift and purposeful action to secure water bodies if that objective is not fulfilled punishing/penalizing an employee won’t do us any good except to calm the vexation caused. The said act also mandates the identifying flood basins and accordingly defines the land use around the water bodies, such an activity is a must to do exercise and should be prioritized and implemented now more than never by the water resources Regulator authority ( WWRA). If the act is strengthened more it would prove to be a game changer and not less than a revolution. The authority could do much more to create awareness about the act and should not limit its scope to collecting quarterly progress reports only. Although In Srinagar city prior permission is required to be sought from SMC to construct any structure, no such large regulatory body existed in other Districts and villages. However, in the recent past, the government has now made it mandatory for those planning to build any structure to apply for a change of land use before starting any construction and a Committee of Officers headed by a District Magistrate decides on such cases, which is a very good step towards regulating the constructions and curbing encroachments. The Government has also made the whole process online making it easier for people to get permissions in a time-bound manner. This shall definitely prove to be beneficial in the larger run.
Encroachments Along Water Bodies Alarming
The problem of encroachments is so alarming and the shortage of field staff and watchers in the departments rubs more salt in the wound. The burden falls on the engineering staff who have to shift their attention from their primary job and focus more towards stopping the encroachments thereby hampering various developmental projects. There is no problem if our Engineers are given extra responsibility to be custodians of the water bodies but they should at least have sufficient manpower and resources to help them deal with the problem. It is high time for JKWWRA to take responsibility for curbing encroachments within its domain. Looking at the grave nature of the violations and the impact it creates it is the immediate need of the hour.
The engineers argue that the government or SWWRA constitute a dedicated River Protection Force with adequate staff in the engineering departments (especially irrigation and flood control) whose mandate should only be the watch and ward of the River Jhelum 24X7 (on a pilot basis) and necessary powers should be vested in such body that the staff must find no excuse to stop an encroachment or illegal mining and the responsibilities must be fixed. Perhaps watch huts/ towers could be constructed after every 5km stretch or more along the length of the River where the staff would permanently be stationed so that they could take cognizance of any violation along the river and book an offender instantly with no time lag.
“If constituting RPF is not possible at this stage, at least all the water bodies must be demarcated on the ground and boundary pillars are constructed after fixed intervals and such boundary markers/posts be protected under law from any sabotage,” they said, adding “the distance of buffer, no construction zones should be declared around the boundaries of water bodies and along the river, canal bunds. As of now, the High Court of J&K has ordered a 200-metre metre buffer zone around Dal Lake and 100 metres along River Sindh. Similarly, buffer/no construction zones need to be specified for all water bodies be it natural or man-made, off-course proportionate to the magnitude of water holding/carrying capacity. This will surely ease in deciding building permission cases and shall bring in more transparency and help identify encroachment(s). As far as possible in such matters, there should be no scope for grey areas rather black & white should easily be discernable.”
The officials argue that it would also be in the best interests if the government declares all the encroachments, obstructions, illegal mining, and embankment damage whether of small or larger magnitude as a cognizable offence. “As of now challans are issued and it takes considerable time for a case to get listed before a civil Judge for decision and till such time the accused person/violators get a free license to keep on repeating the offence. The fine, if possible, should instead be collected by the field functionaries instantly from violators at the very place where any wrongdoing happens,” they said. “It will be icing on the cake if Munsif Court is established within JKWWRA to decide on all such cases falling under the ambit of the water resources regulation and management act or if not possible Honorable members of JKWWRA could be empowered to discharge such functions. This reform would ameliorate the rate of conviction.”
They opined that people should always introspect and understand that preserving water bodies must be considered a moral duty at an individual level too and should leave no stone unturned for safeguarding the future which definitely does rely upon pristine water bodies.
“We must understand that no Government in the world can curb something done at a mass level. We must know that individually we are responsible and possess authority too. We the people should never be in a race to compete with a person who encroaches upon a waterbody but vehemently opposes the act of infringement and actively helps the Government.” They said, adding “We must not justify our own wrong practices with the excuse of citing the example of someone else having done the same. “HyumTeHaezKorr Yee cannot and should not be our alibi. Nature always reciprocates, and that too ruthlessly. Remember, we are the guardians of the planet and its waterbodies, and that of the continuity of life too.”