West Bengal: Real Estate Agents on a High After BJP Whisper Campaign on ‘Restoring’ Adi Ganga River Bed

Kolkata: As the election climate starts warming up in West Bengal, small and medium real estate agents, hoping for a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ‘takeover’, are eyeing contracts for ‘restoration’ of the Adi Ganga, the nearly 75-km- long dried bed of the original river Ganga that has now been encroached upon.

Before the Trinamool Congress came to power in 2011, the Left Front government had refused to give land pattas to refugee families who had settled across Tolly’s Nullah and Adi Ganga in different parts of Rajpur Sonarpur. But, BJP leaders, including state president Dilip Ghosh have now promised ‘restoration’ of Adi Ganga river bed.

According to Kamal Ganguly, former chairman of the Rajpur Sonarpur Municipality and a CPI(M) leader: “Though as a policy, the Left Front was sensitive to the worries of the refugees, we had taken a ‘no tolerance’ stance on encroachment of the river bed (for environmental reasons), and had ordered that no permanent structure can be constructed.”

Ganguly said in case of any re-excavation of the river, the Central, State or municipal authorities need to give way for the project and only then the question of compensation and alternative residential plots can be looked into.

The TMC government, too, had made similar promises but dithered as the environment aspect had worried even the “patta warriors” who were wary of taking any step for direct construction on the river bed, Ganguly added.

“TMC has washed out its chances’, said Pinaki Saha, a real estate agent, who is planning to turn his residential flat into a duplex apartment, provided the Adi Ganga restoration turns the area into an upmarket suburb.

A nearby locality called Patuli is being showcased as a ‘model’ after restoration by the whisper campaign team of BJP, which is eyeing not only two to three Lok Sabha segments but is also hoping to cash in on Hindu religious dividends.

Incidentally, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee‘s home is also on encroached land on the banks of Adi Ganga, which have now turned into real estate havens in the Kalighat area. The land originally belongs to the Kolkata Port Trust, and was in the proximity of the now extinct Martin Burn narrow gauge railway line.

“During my childhood days, in the early 80s, we would see boats coming up to Kudghat and even to Garia” said 45-year-old management expert Angshuman Das. He recalled that “until the construction of the Metro Rail pillars and after a desiltation programme was undertaken by the irrigation department of the then Left Front government, the river had become navigable up to Garia even till the 1990s”. The last nail was put by the present chief minister Mamata Banerjee, he added.

Interestingly, in Lashkarpur, Garia Bazaar, Baishnabghata, Baruipur, several artefacts, including medieval coins, idols, skeletons and huge capsized boats were recovered during excavation work for real estate construction, which indicates that many merchant boats probably capsized. It is said that merchants from ancient Bengal went deep into the Bay of Bengal to trade with countries like Arakan (now in Myanmar) Cambodia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

The area that is now referred to as Garia Bazaar is said to be the place, according to a historian, where one of the richest merchants of medieval Bengal, Chand Saudagar, lost his life when his boat capsized. In the nearby Garia Burning Ghat, a Shiva temple dedicated to Chand Saudagar, built by his son Shrimanta Saudagar, still stands testimony to the ancient flow of the Ganges and of the cremation ghat that was located on an embankment of the original flow of river Ganges.

As regards Adi Ganga, since the 1970s, a large part of the land was taken over by men belonging to the then ruling Congress party and sold to rich citizens, who constructed their ‘garden homes’ (bagan badi) aligned to the river bed. Yet, more than 30 huge waterbodies still remain on the river bed, which are known as Kar’er Ganga, Bose’r Ganga, and so on, signifying the illegal sale procedure of land on the river bed during Congress rule.

Just after crossing the Rajpur Sonarpur Municipality (RSM) area, the Adi Ganga resurfaces, as it enters the Baruipur and Joynagar-Majilpur Municiplality area. According to hydrology experts, throughout the Rajpur Sonarpur Municipality area, the river flows underground, maintaining its water flow, and the overground flow has been seriously impeded by encroachments. There have been multiple litigations on the issue in the High Court and even in the Supreme Court, but so far these have only resulted in several fact-finding committee being set up, noting more.

Later, the RSM tried to keep the remnant flow from Kamalgazi to Piyali River free from waste by ensuring strict vigilance, by including it under the Ganga Action Plan, and by diverting all sewerage drains of neighbouring industrial ares. However, under TMC rule, the remnant Adi Ganga, is now regarded as a dangerous environmental polluter, as its black-coloured water has been contaminating even groundwater. Not a single waste treatment plant is reportedly functioning.

The extended part of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass has been laid on the banks of the Adi Ganga, thereby ensuring that the remnant portion is not encroached upon.

Ganguly said the Left Front-led Board, Kolkata Municipal Corporation and RSM complied with a court directive to clear the Adi Ganga and Tolly’s Nullah bank from encroachment “despite stiff opposition from the present Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.”

The lost main channel of Ganges of West Bengal as it is now

As per ancient texts, the main channel of river Ganges was not Padma, or even the present Hooghly as it flows now, but a river channel called Adi Ganga, part of which is known as Tolly’s Nullah (as it was excavated by Major William Tolly, a British serviceman, after the major channel relatively dried out after a man-made course alteration of Adi Ganga, either by the former Nawabs of Bengal or by Dutch traders in the 17th Century.)

Whatever be the reason, the consequence has been disastrous, not only for South 24 Parganas district, but also for India, especially later the main flow of the Ganges as a result was diverted through the Padma, which India tried to amend by constructing the Farakka Barrage.

At one side Tolly’s Nullah changed its route after Garia in the South eastern fringes of the city and was merged with a tidal river called Sarswati, in Sonarpur, while the Adi Ganga’s original flow was toward another tidal river, called Piyali. Both these rivers were vital for supplying irrigation water to Sonarpur, which was predominantly agriculture based.

However, real estate sharks took over in the late 90S, with the adjoining area, known as Rajpur Sonarpur, witnessing the highest level of urban growth in the state due to its proximity with the Kolkata Metropolis and due to construction of the EM bypass by the then Left Front government.

In the late 70s, a sluice gate was constructed in Kudghat region, which hampered the flow of Adi Ganga. However, the Metro rail project, which the Left Front had demanded under the canal, was passed by the present Chief Minister and then Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee, over the Adi Ganga.

This proved to be the last nail for the famed Adi Ganga or the original channel of the river Ganga.