Finally, bridge comes up to mitigate sufferings of Gurdaspur villagers

Ravi Dhaliwal

Gurdaspur, March 16

“For the past so many decades, we elected men who built walls, while we needed someone who could build bridges.” This was the common refrain from villagers as they saw their lifeline, a 52-metre long bridge, being inaugurated.

With the opening of the bridge, villagers will no longer have to walk 5 km to cremate their dead. Schools and hospitals, too, will be easily approachable.

The Rs 1.21-crore project on the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) near Babbehali village has been constructed and opened to traffic nearly 75 years after it was first conceived. Raman Bahl, Chairman of the Punjab Health Systems Corporation and AAP halqa in-charge of Gurdaspur, has been instrumental in the planning and execution of the project.

The villages which stand to benefit are Babbehali, Gunjian, Tibri and Nawapind.

Raman said he had to coordinate between several departments in Chandigarh before the PWD was entrusted with the task.

Makhan Singh (96) said he was a strapping 28-year-old youth when, in the fall of 1955, former Chief Minister Partap Singh Kairon had visited their village. He said he and his village brethren had urged him to get a bridge constructed to mitigate their sufferings. Without an overpass, they had to hire a trolley to bring their dead to the cremation ground, which is located on the other side of the UBDC. “We told Kairon that if the government of the day could construct a marvel called Bhakra canal, what stopped it from building an overpass over the UBDC which would not only make their life easier but also shorten distances between the village and schools, dispensaries and the cremation ground? “Kairon’s promise fell flat and work never commenced,” said Makhan Singh.

Makhan recalls he had made a reference to Bhakra canal, also called a mainline, because work on it had commenced in November 1955, just weeks before Kairon had visited their village.

Interestingly, Babbehali is the native village of ex-SAD MLA Gurbachan Singh Babbehali. He remained a two-time legislator between 2007 and 2017. However, he made little headway to ensure the venture saw the light of day.

From 2017 to 2022, there was a Congress MLA of the area. Like his predecessor, he, too, failed to achieve the objective. Villagers claim petty politicking and cheap vote bank politics made sure that the bridge was not constructed despite its immense utility value.

Now villagers can reach the main Gurdaspur-Mukerian road within minutes. Earlier, they had to take a long detour.

Raman Bahl said when the project was still on the drawing-board stage, he had to convince the bureaucracy about how important the venture was for the villagers. “I also had to take on board finance ministry officials. Finally, after months of effort, things finally fell in place,” said Bahl.