CHANDIGARH: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today demanded a high-level judicial probe into the criminal negligence committed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in not maintaining the Madhopur barrage and condemned it for trying to pass off its negligence on a private company.
In a statement here, senior SAD leader Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said only a judicial probe could fix accountability for the deliberate negligence which led to the collapse of three gates of the Madhopur barrage and subsequent destruction of standing crops across lakhs of acres besides 56 deaths and loss of thousands of livestock.
Accusing the government of trying to shift blame for the entire fiasco on a private company, Dr Daljit Cheema said Minister Barinder Goyal had issued a show cause notice to Level9 Biz Private Limited for submitting an allegedly wrong report that 6.2 lakh cusecs of water could pass safely through the Madhopur headworks. The Akali leader said subsequent events as well as the reply of the private company had revealed that assessing the health of the barrage structure was never in its scope of work. “The company was assigned the work of estimating the design flood review in relation to the original design flood of the Madhopur barrage after collection of hydrological data. It did this and its work was rated as satisfactory”.
Dr Cheema said the fact of the matter was that three gates of the Madhopur barrage had collapsed because they were not maintained and had not been tested. He said the Chief Engineer (Design) was himself not clear about the company’s role in analyzing the barrage’s structure and was now saying that the report had been sent to the dam safety wing for detailed analysis. “All this calls for a judicial probe to fix accountability for this negligence”.
The SAD leader also condemned the AAP government for coming out with a policy for students admitted in MBBS courses in government medical colleges to give a Rs 20 lakh bond surety which would be forfeited in case they do not serve in rural and underserved areas for a specific period. He said the government should make the PCMS service attractive by giving commensurate pay besides improving working conditions instead of coming out with dictatorial and unethical conditions. He demanded immediate withdrawal of this measure saying under privileged students would not be able to come up with the sureties.
Dr Cheema also demanded the immediate withdrawal of government orders to municipal committees and corporations to pass resolutions allowing for giving cleaning, garbage lifting, sewerage cleaning and lighting responsibilities to pre-selected private players after calling tenders for the same. He said this was another attempt after the land pooling scheme to collect money by making tailor made contracts. The leader said that it was unfortunate that Committees who had rejected the resolution were being overridden and said if this proposal was carried through thousands of employees would lose their jobs.
Answering a media question, Dr Cheema said it was unfortunate that the central government had not withdrawn it’s advisory restricting State governments from giving permission to Sikh Jathas to travel to Pakistan to pay obeisance at Sri Nankana Sahib on the occasion of Parkash Purb of Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji in November. He urged the centre to withdraw the advisory in the wake of resumption of cricketing ties between the two nations besides calling for reopening the Kartarpur Corridor. He also
called for calm as well as the need to ensure the perpetrator of the ghastly murder of a boy in Hoshiarpur was awarded exemplary punishment. He said the incident should not be used to issue appeals against migrant labour which would cause unrest in society.