NEW DELHI, March 24 : In his first meeting with Bhagwant Mann after the latter took over as Chief Minister of Punjab, Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh today updated Mann about the salient features of the national Shahpur-Kandi project which will cater to the bordering districts of Kathua and Samba in Jammu & Kashmir and Pathankot and Gurdaspur in Punjab. During the meeting lasting over half an hour, the two leaders also discussed several other issues of mutual interest between J&K and Punjab.
Dr Jitendra Singh informed the Punjab CM that the first phase of the project is likely to be launched before the end of this year and it will be a game-changer for J&K and Punjab. He expressed confidence that the project, which was stalled for four decades, will see the light of the day with Bhagwant Mann as the Chief Minister, whom he had closely known as a colleague in the 16th and the 17th Lok Sabha and incidentally when he and Mann got elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time, both of them did not have a government accommodation and they were both lodged in the same hotel.
Bhagwant Mann expressed his desire to undertake a visit to Shahpur-Kandi Project accompanied by Dr Jitendra Singh. He said, this will help provide a first hand experience and also an opportunity to plan further roadmap of cooperation for the times to come.
Wishing Bhagwant Mann a fruitful and productive tenure as Chief Minister of an important State like Punjab, Dr Jitendra Singh said, there are many things which are common between J&K and Punjab and one of these is river Ravi which had been granted to India under the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 between India and Pakistan. He said, it was either misplaced priorities or motivated political considerations because of which the Shahpur-Kandi project did not take off ever since it was initiated in the 1970s. It was only after the personal intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that a fresh draft paper was prepared and the project was launched with a formal announcement by PM Modi during his visit to Jammu in early 2019.
Once this game-changer project is fully functional, said Dr. Jitendra Singh, the border districts of Kathua and Samba in J&K and districts Pathankot and Gurdaspur in Punjab will be the main beneficiaries with sufficient water for irrigation. The dry or less irrigated zone, which was traditionally referred to as “Kandi” belt, will no longer be known as “Kandi” and the future generation will not even be aware of this expression.
The Shahpur-Kandi Dam has the potential of irrigating 32173 hectares which will give a huge fillip to the socio-economic transformation.
