Save the Chakirpasha River from grabbers

River grabbing is not new in Bangladesh. It is tantamount to killing hundreds and thousands of men as those people depend on rivers for their livelihood. Without river, civilization can’t be imagined. Even this simple truth has eluded this country for quite a long time. Rivers after rivers are being encroached upon and reports after reports are being published on the issue but nothing has stopped river grabbing.

We have published many reports on major river encroachment by influential people. So far we have seen banks of river being encroached upon. But, may be, this is the first time The Business Post published a news item on an entire river encroachment on May 27. One encroacher did not stop only by grabbing the land of the Chakirpasha River at Rajarhat Upazila in Kurigram. He also took a bank loan mortgaging a piece of land of the river.

What is astonishing is he later sold that piece of land of the river while it was still under mortgage as he had failed to repay the loan. The issue has raised lots of questions. Why did the bank concerned grant the loan without verifying the proper status of the land? What did the local administration and office concerned do? Could it happen as the land grabber was a local ruling party leader?

More astonishing the fact was what the Kurigram district administration said in a letter to the National River Conservation Commission (NRCC) in 2020. In the letter it wrote that Chakirpasha was mentioned as marsh in the CS (Cadastral Survey). Is it believable and acceptable? How and on what basis could the district administration come to this decision? It is the responsibility of the district administration to come up with a logical statement. Will it suffice only to punish, if there is any, the man under question?

In fact it was just the opposite of what the district administration wrote in its letter. This newspaper on the basis of document available at its disposal citing the first complete cadastral survey (CS) of India carried out between 1887 and 1940 wrote that 50-kilometer-long Chakirpasha was mentioned as a river in the CS originating from the lower area of Itakuri in Rajarhat and joining the Brahmaputra at Chilmari Upzila in Kurigram.

In the CS record the river had an area of 306 acres covering Nafadanga, Khalisha and Chakirpasha Union of Kurigram. But in the State Acquisition Survey (SA) conducted between 1956 and 1962 the amount of land mentioned was 229 acres as the rest had already been occupied. In the Revision Survey (RS) the occupied land was estimated at 36.28 acres.

During the 1990s, the district administration declared the Chakirpasha River as an open wetland. The process actually began much earlier. What we are seeing now is the culmination of the process. However, the district administration has prepared a list of 22 influential people as land grabbers. It is a question too why it made the list when it treated the river as a wetland.

The NRCC has written to the district administration six times over the last two years to take necessary steps to evict the encroachers but in vain. Will not those whose negligence or may be corruption aided and abetted the person accused of grabbing the river be punished under the laws of the land? We think it is not only the grabbers but also those who were assigned to protect rivers and environment should be held guilty equally.