BAHAWALNAGAR: Scores of farmers from tail-end villages of Faqirwali on Friday held a protest on the Haroonabad-Faqirwali road against the irrigation department for allegedly cutting supply of canal water to their areas by increasing size of the water outlets of the influential landowners.

The villagers, belonging to Chak 441 to Chak 443 of Faqirwali, alleged the irrigation officials up to the office of the sub-divisional officer (SDO) were involved in selling the farmers’ share of water from the 6/R Canal to influential landowners by taking bribe. As a result, thousands of acres of land of the tail-end farmers were deprived of the canal water or they were getting insufficient water to irrigate their lands, they added.

The protesters, including All Pakistan Kisan Ittehad Haroonabad chapter general secretary Tariq Javed, told the media the excesses of the corrupt irrigation officials, including a sub-engineer, had left no other option for the hundreds of families of farmers without a drop of canal water.

The farmers kept the road block for hours. They warned of blocking all roads leading to Bahawalnagar if the irrigation officials did not mend their ways and restored normal water supply to the tail-end areas.

The Irrigation Department Exen and SDO were not available for their comments.

BAIL: An anti-corruption court of Bahawalpur dismissed the post-arrest bail plea of a tehsildar of Bahawalnagar, a week after his pre-arrest bail was rejected by the Multan ACE in another corruption case.

Tehsildar Zafar Mughal was arrested red-handed by the ACE on Dec 6 with a bribe amount of Rs100,000 at his office. He was charged with receiving the bribe from a citizen, Ali Khan of Bahawalnagar, in exchange of giving him favours in an inquiry against a patwari launched on complaint of Ali. The Board of Revenue, Punjab (Field Establishment Branch) had suspended tehsildar from service on Dec 8, two days after his arrest.

On Friday, Mughal was sent to the district jail after his post-arrest bail plea was rejected by the special judge of ACE Bahawalpur Chaudhry Muhammad Tariq Javed.

The revenue sources told Dawn that nine corruption cases had been registered against Mughal during his tenure in Multan, Khanewal, Vehari, Muzaffargarh and Bahawalnagar from 2015 to 2021.

A corruption case was registered against him during his posting as tehsildar in Multan on June 26, in which he was already on interim bail. Despite that case, he had got the post of Bahawalnagar tehsildar in the mid of July because of backing of some ruling party legislators, the sources alleged.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2021