Controversy over Assam water project being named after ‘Pakistan’
The naming of a water supply project in Upper Assam’s Dhemaji district after ‘Pakistan’, which is inhabited by ethnic communities, has forced the Public Health Engineering Department to remove ‘Pakistan’ from the nameplate.
At the root of this dispute is a simple linguistic distortion, whereby the original name, Pak Sthan Suk, meaning a place accessible via a winding road, has become ‘Pakistan Suk’. Over the years, the name has been in circulation and even official documents have reviewed the name. Hence the PHE department named the water project as ‘Pakistan Suba (Earth Colony) Water Supply Scheme’. PHE Minister Ranjit Kumar Das assured that he will sort out the issue and take prompt action.
Nandita Roy Gohain, Sub-Divisional Officer, Dhemaji (Sadar), who led an inspection team of district administration officials on Thursday, said, “The original name ‘Pak Sthan Suk’ was somehow ‘Pakistan Suk’ and ‘Pakistan’. Officially recorded in the documents of the PHE department.”
“The ancestors of the present residents named the Pak place Suk. It was once a separate land due to the distant location, mostly inhabited by Ahom and Chutiya communities. There are no Muslim villagers there,” Gohain told TOI.
Activists of Bir Lachit Army on Wednesday erased the name of Pakistan from the nameplate of the project as the PHE department did not act despite the issue that created a media storm in the past few days.
Given the gravity of the matter, Das had personally spoken to Dhemaji MLA and Education Minister Ranoj Pegu and Director of Jal Jeevan Mission, Assam. Akash Deep, director of the Assam Jal Jeevan Mission, said, as informed by the Dhemaji DC, the ‘Pakistan Suba’ has been removed on a temporary basis.
Gohain later said that the project was renamed Burhakuri Dakhin Suk, after the revenue village Burhakuri, under which the area falls. “The people living here are from Other Backward Classes (OBC). There are no minority people to be found there,” she insisted.
Burhakuri village head Parul Chutia (38) said that there are 249 families in the entire village and the water supply project was built for the families of ‘Pakistan Suk’. Chutia said there are four blocks in Burhakuri village and ‘Pakistan Suk’ is one of them.
“That is how the name is being pronounced. But we have never written it in any official communication.”
Government sources said the records of the PHE department show that the name is in vogue since 1992. “There are formalities that need to be completed before the name ‘Pakistan’ is removed permanently,” the sources said.
Controversy over Assam water project being named after ‘Pakistan’
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by News East India staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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