Satnam Singh of Gatti Rahimeke village in Ferozepur district, which is near the Pakistan border, grows wheat and paddy on about 4.5 acres on the Sutlej riverbed. However due to floods caused by the overflowing Sutlej river, his fields are inundated for the past one month. “The first flooding took place in July when it rained heavily in Himachal Pradesh and again on August 18. The water was never drained out in July and now, water has entered our houses. The connecting roads are all inundated and the only way out are boats,” he said, adding that he doesn't even own the fields so he is not even sure if he will get the due compensation from the government. Similar is the story of Angrej Singh of Gatti Rajoke village, who grows crops on about 10 acres but also doesn't own the land. Parkash Singh of Tendiwala in Ferozepur said that his village has barely 200 houses and most of them have the same ownership issues over their land as it is on the Sutlej riverbed. “Our houses have been damaged, are fields are almost gone. But we can't even say anything as we are don't owe the land. This is exactly why border villages have so much poverty,” he said, adding that since there is water everywhere, there are also issues of power supply and drinking water. “We have one generator and we arrange diesel somehow. We use whatever little power supply we get through this to charge our mobile phone or for lights and fans. When we have such daily issues, compensation for crop loss becomes secondary,” said Parkash, who stays with his parents and daughter. Around 50 villages in Ferozepur urban, Ferozepur rural and Guru-Har-Sahai constituencies of the district have water on around 30,000 acres of agriculture land. Sukhmandeep Singh of Mahatam Nagar village in Fazilka district, said that they too live as the place has seen repeated floods. “We hardly get compensated for our crop loss and even this time we don't have much hope. While AAP MLAs don't give any clarity on the issue, the CM makes false promises,” he said. Rajesh Dhiman, deputy commissioner of Ferozepur, said that they are aware of the ownership rights issue of many farmers. “We are aware that apart from agricultural fields, nearly 150 houses have been damaged in Ferozepur. We are separately counting loss to livestock. We will try to get them compensation,” he said. When asked, Fazilka deputy commissioner Senu Kapila Duggal said that they will also send details of farmers with no ownership rights to the CMO for compensation. Most farmers in Ferozepur, Fazilka, Tarn Taran, and Gurdaspur districts have ownership rights issue and a few of them are in Sangrur and Patiala as well. In Punjab, there are around 11,200 such farmers and 4,000 such acres along the riverbed of Sutlej, Beas and Ghaggar. In 2020, the Punjab Assembly led by then CM Capt Amarinder Singh had passed a bill vesting of proprietary rights 2020 to such tillers who had been doing farming for generations but still had no registered land in their names. In March this year, President Droupadi Murmu had given accent to this bill under which, farmers could get ownership rights after paying some compensation. However, no discussion took place after that. Back in 1997, several farmers got land on riverbed registered. Later in 2012-2017, the Badal government started the process again but kept Rs 50,000 per acre as compensation amount to get the land registered. Very few farmers got land registered at that time and even that was nullified in 2017 by the Congress government, who passed their own bill.
