Mufti visits Jammu’s flood-affected areas and claims the center is “turning over forests and rivers to contractors.”

PDP leader and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti claimed Thursday that the Central government was “handing over our forests, mountains, rivers, and nullahs to private contractors just for peanuts” and that the region’s recent heavy rains, cloudbursts, and flash floods were caused by extensive destruction of the region’s hills and forests. Jammu is currently experiencing severe flooding.

She criticized the Center’s Rs 209 crore commitment as inadequate in light of the extensive damage and called for a comprehensive relief and rehabilitation package from the Center to reconstruct lives lost in the floods in Jammu region.

After visiting various flood-hit areas of Jammu, Mufti alleged that the contractors were “felling lakhs of trees in the name of development — construction of a four-lane road or a tunnel. While constructing a tunnel, you dig out earth and in the process spring water also comes out, rendering the hills hollow”. “They have made so many roads for Char Dham and of them, two Dhams are closed today because the contractors have destroyed our forests,’’ she said, urging the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognizance of the large-scale destruction in Himalayan region.

“This is an environmental disaster and today, Punjab too is facing the brunt,’’ she said. As rain pounded Punjab, the death toll rose to 37 on Thursday.

“Cloudbursts, flash floods will not stop as we ourselves destroyed our environment and pushed the future generations also towards disaster,” she said.

Mufti said big projects, including construction of six lane roads and tunnels, are initiated “where there is no need and where these are needed, they wouldn’t take those up”. “They do not make a tunnel on the Mughal Road or the Sinthan Top which will ease pressure of vehicles on the present Jammu-Srinagar NH, but they will make small tunnels at the cost of our ecology as these get them money,” she said.