Three officers suspended in Madhopur barrage gates incident in Pathankot

Chandigarh, Sep 20 (PTI) The Punjab government has suspended three officers, including an executive engineer, in the Madhopur barrage incident in which two floodgates of the headworks in Pathankot district collapsed last month amid heavy rain and floods in the state, officials said on Saturday.

The damage aggravated the flood situation in the area. Officials who had reached the site to manually open the gates were trapped and one of them was later found dead while the others were airlifted.

Executive engineer Nitin Sood, sub-divisional officer Arun Kumar and junior engineer Sachin Thakur of the water resources department have been placed under suspension, according to official orders.

The incident occurred on August 27 when two out of the 54 floodgates at the Madhopur headworks failed during an operation to release excess water following a heavy inflow into the Ravi River.

Officials went to the site to manually open the gates amid rising water levels. As a result of the gate failure, several officials were trapped at the site and later had to be airlifted. The mortal remains of one of the officials, who went missing following the incident, were later found.

At that time, over 2 lakh cusecs of water were released into the Ravi River after the water level in the Ranjit Sagar dam was at its maximum capacity.

There are a total of 54 flood gates at the Madhopur Headworks that are used to control the flow of water.

Following this incident, water resources minister Barinder Kumar Goyal had blamed a private company for wrongly certifying the strength of the Mahodhpur headworks gates.

He had then said that the company, engaged in 2024 to assess the headworks gates, wrongly certified them as capable of withstanding 6.25 lakh cusecs of water.

However, the gates failed to manage even half the certified capacity, leading to their collapse and the tragic death of a department employee, he had then said. Goyal had then said that a notice was served to the company. PTI CHS SMV RT