If there’s one thing that Ghatal has never had any dearth of, it is floods. Every monsoon, this subdivision of West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district gets to experience a sinking feeling. And things are no different this year, with everything from a hospital, to a police station, to a market finding itself inundated. Even a moderate amount of rain is enough to set off floods in this saucer-shaped region.
Three rivers from the west, Kasai, Shilabati and Dwarakeswar, flow through Ghatal. And from the other side come the rivers Rupnarayan, New Kasai and various small tributaries. When all, or some, of these rivers are fed by rain, Ghatal goes underwater.
In the 1950s, Left MP Nikunja Behari Chowdhury raised the plight of this region in Parliament. A committee was formed that proposed a Ghatal master plan. A foundation stone-laying ceremony was carried out in 1983 by West Bengal’s Left government. Another decade passed, and in 1993 the Ghatal Master Plan Rupayan Sangram Committee was formed including locals.
The plan was to carry out regular dredging and desiltation of the rivers in the region to save Ghatal from the flooding. Following the foundation-laying ceremony, the state’s Left government in the 1980s promised that the problem would soon be over. That did not happen.
Decades later, after the Mamata Banerjee government came to power, the plan was taken up by her irrigation minister Manas Bhunia. The master plan panel also put its demand in front of the administration, and got a clearance from the Ganga Flood Control Committee.
The planned budget initially was Rs 2,200 crore, but after the GFCC sanction it came down to Rs 1,240 crore. At the time, the rule was that 75 per cent of the money would come from the Centre and the remaining 25 per cent from the state. This formula later changed to a fifty-fifty one.
“After the GFCC clearance, the technical committee clearance too came. We have made several submissions since 2015 but nothing has happened. The Centre is blaming the state and the state blaming the Centre. We, therefore, will again urge the state government to form an all-party delegation and we should together approach the Centre for this,” said the master plan committee’s joint secretary Narayan Nayak.
The Bengal government has started some work on the initiative with dredging being carried out in various rivers. But locals say with the master plan not being implemented, their problems persist.
“I raised this issue in the Rajya Sabha. Mamata Banerjee has written letters several times, but nothing happened. The Centre’s attitude has put us in a quandary,” said Manas Bhunia, now West Bengal’s water resources investigation and development minister, and former Rajya Sabha member.
Governments change, new leaders come with old promises, the blame game goes on, but the root of the matter remains the same, say locals.
“Since childhood, we have been hearing about the Ghatal master plan. When elections come, promises related to the plan soar but nothing happens on the ground. We urge all the authorities to save us,” said Ghatal resident Shacchinandan Bera.
Nirmal Chandra Pal, another local resident, said, “This tussle between the Centre and the state is responsible for everything. We want this plan to be implemented. We vote diligently, so why do we have to face the same problem every year?”
When contacted by News18, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh, who is also the Lok Sabha lawmaker from the Medinipur district, hit back at the Trinamool Congress government. “For this project, the state has not given land. The Centre has given money; God knows where that has gone. They are always ready to blame the Centre. I will be visiting Ghatal on August 7 to meet the people. But the Centre is cooperating,” he said.
Local Trinamool MP Dev visited the area on August 4. “The Centre is not doing anything. We hope things will start moving when Mamata Banerjee is in the central government,” he said.
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