SRINAGAR: A photograph is circulated on social media showing a peculiar forest-road-type motorable track with captions indicating that it is on Beerwa-Magam-Budgam Road. Though many users have disputed its existence, the photograph is being debated with a focus on ridiculing the engineers.
Kashmir Life Newsroom attempted to locate the patch on the road in Budgam. There was no evidence of it anywhere. “I travel on the Beerwa Budgam Road daily and at least once on the Beerwa-Magam-Budgam but I do not remember it exists anywhere,” one daily commuter told Kashmir Life. “Maybe it is somewhere deep inside the forest which I am not aware of.”
The newsroom tried to locate the origins of the photograph using social media and Google.
This was the earliest posting of this photograph, dated December 2023. The user of this Twitter account lives on the other side of the Line of Control.
نام نہاد آزاد کشمیر کے حکمرانوں سے گزارش ہے وقار پسوال کو پاکستان مقبوضہ کشمیر کشمیر کی تعمیر و ترقی اپنے فالورز کو دیکھانے کی رساہی دے تاکہ ہندوستان مقبوضہ جموں کشمیر کے لوگ ہماری ترقی اور قاہدانہ صلاحیت دیکھ سکیں#Kashmir @BBCUrdu @farooq_pm @HamidMirPAK @JKCHR @hrw pic.twitter.com/YXvZaC0M7O
— Waheeda Jammu Kashmiri (@KashmiriWaheeda) December 2, 2023
The photograph made a reappearance. This time in Morocco, a Facebook user posted it in April 2024
It again appeared on Facebook in Iraq, in April only.
Now it has made a grand appearance in Kashmir.
The photograph is misleading and wrongly attributed to Kashmir. All the roads in Budgam district are better with varied degrees of macadamization. There is no such patch on any of the main roads that resemble this.
The actual existence of the road patch maybe somewhere else. But such roads are being constructed in ecologically fragile areas for basic minimal biotic intervention.
