Basic amenities elude native villages of Khattar, Hooda
HARYANA CHIEF MINISTER HAILS FROM BANYANI VILLAGE, WHILE HIS PREDECESSOR WAS BORN IN SANGHI; NO FUNDS SPENT FROM MPLADS, SAYS ROHTAK MP SHARMA
ROHTAK: Amid claims of allround development in Haryana, there still are villages which lack even basic amenities.
Among those are native villages of Haryana chief minister (CM) Manohar Lal Khattar and his predecessor Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Khattar was born in Rohtak’s Nidana village, but his family later moved to Banyani village of the same district.
Hooda, who headed the Congress government in the state from 2005 to 2014, was born at Sanghi village, also in Rohtak.
BANE OF BANYANI VILLAGE
Though Khattar returned to power after 2019 assembly polls, the promise of RO water supply that he made to Banyani residents during his first tenure is yet to be fulfilled.
When an HT team visited Banyani, which falls under the Kalanaur assembly segment, it found a group of senior citizens sitting merely 200 metres away from the chief minister’s paternal home. A brief conversation with them revealed that their demands of construction of ghats around village ponds, road connectivity to neighbouring villages, playground for youngsters and adequate transport facilities were yet to be met.
74-year-old Jeet Ram said,
“We are forced to drink contaminated water as the promise made by the CM about provision of RO (reverse osmosis) water has not been fulfilled so far. As far as connectivity is concerned, only one Haryana Roadways bus reaches our village. Students and others who have to commute to other villages and towns are mostly dependent on auto-rickshaws. However, in former CM Hooda’s native village Sanghi, buses ply to and fro every 20 minutes,” he claimed. “We ensured Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) victory from Banyani village in the latest assembly elections, but CM Khattar is not showing any interest in the development of our village,” he rued.
“The only development works done by Khattar are setting up of village secretariat and repair of few streets. Construction of a school building had also begun, but it’s still incomplete,” he added. Preeti Shika, a resident of the same village, said many streets have been constructed in last five years, though some of them are damaged.
“During the Hooda regime, we would have to wait for electricity, but we are now getting 22 hours of uninterrupted power supply on daily average. However, garbage is a big problem here. The adjoining villages have stadiums, but our village neither has any indoor sports facility nor an outdoor,” she said, adding that stray cattle menace was also a cause of concern for the farmers of Banyani.
WHAT AILS SANGHI VILLAGERS
Ram Mehar, a resident of Sanghi village, said, “We get electricity supply just for nine hours daily. Our crop is being affected due to frequent power cuts.”
Talking about water supply, healthcare and employment, Mehar said, “After 2014, our canals have remain parched most of the time. There is acute shortage of doctors at the local health centre. Former CM Hooda had provided jobs to more than 500 youths from our village during his tenure, but since the BJP government has taken over, only 12 youths have got employment.”
Pratap Singh also shared a similar grouse. “Hooda did a lot for our village, but development works came to a halt after the BJP came to power in the state in 2014.”
“The works accomplished during the Hooda government include a English-medium model school, a polytechnic college, a model Krishi school, 25 community centres and eight roads to connect Sanghi with other villages,” he added.
On asking Rohtak member of parliament (MP) Dr Arvind Sharma about the money spent by him on Banyani and Sanghi through Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds, he said he has not spent any amount so far in both the villages.