Face2News/Abohar.

At a meeting with Water Resources Minister Barinder Kumar Goyal, MLA Sandeep Jakhar learnt that no village of Abohar constituency had been included in the Pilot Project prepared to tackle water logging.

The Land and Water Conservation Department had drawn up a pilot project with new technology to permanently solve the problem of waterlogging in Fazilka district. The Punjab government had decided to spend Rs. 27 crores on this and claimed that the project will prove to be a boon for the farmers of 29 villages but the list sans Abohar.

Jakhar, who was accompanied by Mayor Vimal Thatai, carried a bottle of contaminated canal water and said that for the last two months, contaminated water has been flowing in the canals, which is not fit for drinking and its samples had failed lab tests. The Municipal Corporation had installed five tube wells to supply water for drinking to about 1.75 lakh residents on rotation basis. He said that farmers living in the tail-end villages of the canal system were not getting enough water.

The MLA said that he had, during the last Punjab Assembly session, requested the state government to provide relief to the villages affected by water logging in Abohar but his constituency had been ignored. Water logging had damaged cotton crops and fruit orchards.