Roughly 50 years ago, the Sot river – a tributary of the mighty Ganges – was a lifeline for the residents of the Sambhal district in Uttar Pradesh, with farmers depending on its water for irrigating their lush green paddy and peppermint crops.

However, the river that passes through 71 gram panchayats in five development blocks disappeared from the district due to large-scale encroachment and neglect. In 2022, when the newly-appointed district magistrate IAS Manish Bansal visited the field, he found there was hardly any water in the river.

“I saw that the river was practically non-existent. We could only see small puliya (culverts) that were once made over the river. At several points, farmers had started growing crops considering it to be vacant land. The streak of the river was not completely connected,” he says.

“At some places, the area was covered in small puddles. The river was encroached to the extent that it lost its path of natural flow downstream. Due to this, nearby areas would remain waterlogged during monsoon. Earlier, the Sot river acted as a natural drainage system for the area,” he adds.

In addition to this, the groundwater table had drastically reduced in the area as farmers became dependent on borewells, which further exacerbated the water problem in the region. “Even hand pumps, as deep as 50 feet, started becoming non-functional because of the receding water table,” says Manish.

That’s when the IAS officer decided to........

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