Residents of the Eidipora Bomai region of Sopore, which is located in the Baramulla district of north Kashmir, made their demands known to higher-ups on November 12 in an effort to improve the basic services that are available in their hamlet.
According to many who live in the area, there is a lack of potable water, inadequate healthcare facilities, an ongoing power issue, and deteriorating roadways in the region.
According to what they claimed, “The region has been overlooked by successive governments, and nobody appears to be taking our issues seriously.”
One of the residents, Muhammad Afzal, said that they voted in the election for the District Improvement Council (DDC) in the hopes of seeing some evidence of improvement in their neighborhood, but “nothing has happened till now on the ground.”
“We have been victimized and fooled by successive regimes, who only visited us to seek votes,” he added. “We have been taken advantage of and fooled by successive regimes.”
“Despite being the largest village in the entirety of the Zaingeer belt, the public health center (PHC) in the area is lacking in facilities, and there is a shortage of doctors,” locals have said. They said that the X-ray machine that had been put at the hospital a year before was also now inoperable and that no official from the hospital was making an effort to fix the equipment.
“How much longer are we going to have to endure in our hamlet due to the lack of basic necessities? A group of villagers asked the question aloud one day: “Why is our village ignored, despite having other nearby areas that are developmentally rich?”
They said that they had regularly brought these concerns to the attention of higher-ups in the administration on several occasions, yet, on the ground, nothing had been done in response to their concerns. The locals also claimed that their hamlet received the least care compared to other villages in the area and that the government seemed unconcerned about the community’s deteriorating status, despite the fact that it was in the worst shape.
Members of the local civil society said that Eidipora Bomai hamlet is comprised of around one thousand houses, despite the fact that the government has completely disregarded the region in terms of providing it with public services.
They said that on the one hand, the government states that it is working for the welfare of people who live in distant locations, and on the other hand, “if we talk about the present condition of the area, no development work has been carried out in our village.” The locals made an appeal to the Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, as well as the district government in Baramulla, requesting that their issues be resolved as quickly as possible.
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