‘Work for Ghatal Master Plan to start from Feb’

Kolkata: The work for Ghatal Master Plan will start from the month of February and the state is hopeful of completing the project by March 2028.

The first meeting of the Ghatal Master Plan monitoring committee was held at the office of SDO Ghatal on Tuesday which was attended by Ghatal MP Deepak Adhikari (Dev), state Irrigation and Waterways minister Manas Ranjan Bhunia, state Irrigation Secretary Manish Jain, District Magistrate West Midnapore Khursheed Ali Qadri and other concerned officials.

Dev appealed to the residents of Ghatal as well as leaders of Opposition parties to extend co-operation and expressed his hope that the project will be implemented by March 2028. The MP also informed that the people who will provide land for the project will be duly compensated. “The work for the Ghatal Master Plan will start from next month under the supervision of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. We will be inviting her (Mamata Banerjee) to be present in Ghatal to mark the commencement of the work.

The people of Ghatal have been reeling under flood almost every year. They are desperate for relief,” Bhunia said after the meeting. The meeting assumes significance in the backdrop of the Calcutta High Court on January 2 directing the principal secretary of the Irrigation and Waterways department to submit a report within six weeks on the implementation of the Ghatal Master Plan, highlighting how and by when it is to be implemented.

The Ghatal Master Plan is a mega project envisaged back in 1959 to save the low-lying areas in and around Ghatal, located at the base of the Chota Nagpur Plateau, from the annual flood. The overflowing waters of the rainfed rivers like Silabati, Damodar, Rupnarayan and Dwarakeshwar, originating in the plateau, inundate a large number of villages every monsoon, destroying crops and displacing people.

The project was approved in 1980 and a foundation stone was laid in 1982. A year after the Trinamool Congress came to power, the state government in 2012 sent a detailed project report, estimating a total cost of nearly Rs 1200 crore, to the Centre. The BJP-led Union government later changed the funding ratio between the Centre and the state government from 75 per cent-25 per cent to 50 per cent-50 per cent but with no funds being allocated, the project could not take off .

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at an election meeting at Arambag in Hooghly ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 had announced that the state will implement the Ghatal Master Plan on its own.