BHOPAL: Absence of roads in villages of Madhya Pradesh continues to make people’s lives miserable. In some places that people have to carry the sick on cots wading through knee-deep muddy water.
A similar scene was witnessed in Morena on Thursday night where a funeral procession was carried out on mucky roads.
Residents of Sangoli village — with a population of about 5,000 —in Morena district have been demanding construction of a small piece of road from village to funeral ground for the past 30 years. Come monsoon, the absence of this 1km road stretch is making the life of the villagers difficult. On Thursday, a funeral procession got stuck in the sludge. Ramdhar Singh Tomar, a resident of Sangoli village said, “For the past 30 years, this has been the main poll issue in the village; however, the road is yet to be constructed.”
He added, “This time we will not allow the netas to step into the village until the road work is done.”
Village sarpanch Jagdish Ojha said that, “We have no kuchcha road in our village and all the roads are tarred. Our panchayat cannot make the road that leads to the funeral ground. We have sought the help of MLAs and MPs for the construction of this road but all efforts have gone in vain.” Earlier this week, visuals of people carrying a cot over their shoulders and treading muddy pathways to take an ailing person to the nearest hospital had gone viral. The villagers have been demanding this road for the past several years but their voice is yet to be heard by the bureaucrats sitting at the state secretariat in Bhopal. It has not even reached the office of the district collector in Morena either.
Earlier this week, about 50 villagers protested at the office of the district collector again and said they would not leave until the issue was resolved. They spent the night in the premises of the office under a shed.
