Student Unions of Ladakh gathered at Press Club Dogra Chowk Jammu on 08 May to raise their voice against the failed mission of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in dealing with the Phuktal river blockage which got blocked in December 2014.

After a series of meeting and discussions within the state and centre government regarding the breaching of the artificial lake in a controlled manner, the government handed over the case to India's most well-known body NDMA to deal with the disaster. They might be well known of how dangerous it could be if the artificial lake will not breach on time and that too in a controlled manner.

NDMA after so many helicopter sorties at the blockage site and standard meeting decided digging a 100 meter long and 5 meter deep channel through which the storage water of the artificial lake will be breached out in a controlled manner. Moreover, NDMA had assured the local people and civil administration that they did the job successfully and the artificial lake will flow in a controlled manner and will not burst out all of sudden. The NDMA team in particular and the state and centre government in general fooled all the innocent people of  Ladakh and specially Zanskar by claiming their childish act of digging a channel as a controlled and safe breaching of the 15km long artificial lake.

But all of a sudden the truth of doing nothing and failure of NDMA has become clear when the artificial lake turned into flood in the history of Zanskar and destroyed everything in its course bridges, fields, and trees. More than 8 wooden bridges and two motorable bridges were washed away.

Strongly opposing the careless works of NDMA, Tundup Wangyal, President All Zanskar Student Association said that they will not tolerate further negligence and step-motherly treatment by the government and NDMA. He added, “They had enough time to prevent the flood from getting deteriorated. NDMA failed to do their job as they failed to breach the lake in a controlled manner. Even after spending crores of money they did something that would have been done free of cost by the local peoples themselves. Even after such a big failure, the NDMA team claims this as a success. They cannot fool the local administration and people of Ladakh anymore. NDMA is the root causes of all the destruction. Schools have remained closed because the teachers were stranded at Leh and it is because NDMA failed to breach out the lake on time. The concerned authority must look in that matter of NDMA seriously,” Wangyal said.