Uttarakhand: Lohari villagers bid teary adieu to homes submerged in Vyasi project

One of the villagers said: "We are feeling extremely sad that the village where we grew up, spent our childhood, today we are watching it for the last time. We have children with us, who are crying since morning, saying "Papa we had lost our home", we left everything here, from ancestral property to farm lands."

Dehradun: A beautiful Lohari village of Uttarakhand's Jaunsar Bawar region has become history as the village got submerged in the Vyasi reservoir as part of the 120 MW Vyasi hydropower project. 71 families who used to live in the village kept staring at the their drowning houses with teary eyes on Sunday after they were served a notice from the administration to evacuate their homes.

One of the villagers said: "We are feeling extremely sad that the village where we grew up, spent our childhood, today we are watching it for the last time. We have children with us, who are crying since morning, saying "Papa we had lost our home", we left everything here, from ancestral property to farm lands." According to the government, 15.44-crore compensation money has been sent to the accounts of families getting displaced. They were offered land at Khadar, which they refused as they wanted to settle somewhere near their existing village.

The process to submerge the area started some months ago. The hydropower project was earlier a part of the 420 MW Lakhwar-Vyasi dam project, the biggest hydroelectric dam complex on the Yamuna river. Roughly 75 km away from Dehradun, it is likely to start generating electricity by the end of this week.

The initiative started in 1972, when a land acquisition agreement was signed between the government and villagers for the dam complex. Between 1977 and 1989, 8,495 hectares of land in the village was acquired for the project. For the next few decades, the project failed to take off.