Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar has pointed the finger squarely at the AAP-led state government for the devastating floods that hit Punjab, calling their handling of the crisis a major failure. Speaking to reporters in Chandigarh on Sunday, Jakhar demanded a full probe into the Punjab floods led by a retired judge to uncover what went wrong.
Jakhar didn’t hold back on the blame game. He revealed that the BJP has filed a complaint with Chandigarh Police over false social media posts that wrongly accused the central government of causing the disaster. “This is all about exposing those spreading these rumors,” he said, vowing to track down the culprits behind the misinformation.
He slammed the Punjab government’s recent assembly session as nothing more than a distraction tactic to dodge real accountability for the flood damage. Instead, Jakhar wants investigators to dig into key details: how much water each dam released during the heavy rains, when repairs happened on dams and headworks, and who got the contracts for safety checks on these structures.
To back his claims, Jakhar highlighted the Ravi River as the main culprit behind much of the destruction. He explained that the floodwaters poured in from the Ranjit Sagar Dam, which sits fully under the Punjab government’s control and has zero ties to the Bhakra Beas Management Board or the central authorities.
Despite weather warnings of heavy rain in the Ravi catchment area from August 20 to 26, the state released very little water from the dam at first. Then, on August 27, they let out 2.75 lakh cusecs in a rush, Jakhar noted, based on the government’s own reports. He even played a video for the media showing a chief engineer’s statement claiming 4.70 lakh cusecs of water rushed in through small rivulets downstream of the Shahpur Kandi project.
But Jakhar called that explanation nonsense. “Between the Ranjit Sagar Dam and the Madhopur headworks, there’s no other river or stream that could carry that much water,” he argued. In his view, it all came from the state-controlled dam. He questioned why officials didn’t open the Madhopur headworks gates ahead of time after the warnings, which might have eased the flooding.
The toll was brutal: 45 embankments broke during the floods, with 42 of them along the Ravi River—all under the state government’s watch. Jakhar also raised red flags about the company hired to inspect the Madhopur headworks gates. The firm, called Level 9, has no background in hydrology or water management; it’s actually a social sciences research outfit. “The government can’t just suspend a few junior officers to cover this up—they handed out the contract themselves,” he said.
On top of that, Punjab boasts 1,000 kilometers of riverside embankments and 800 kilometers of drainage channels, yet the AAP administration failed to clear the drains or reinforce the banks in time. Jakhar’s sharp critique underscores growing calls for better flood management in Punjab as the state recovers from the chaos.
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