ਵਲਟੋਹਾਵਲਟੋਹਾ

Where Valtoha sits

Valtoha is a large village in Patti tehsil of ਤਰਨ ਤਾਰਨ district, Punjab, in the Majha region, in the border belt a short distance from Pakistan. It gives its name to its own community development block and has its own gram panchayat. In the census record it carries village code 038128, covers 2,208 hectares and has PIN code 143418. The 2011 directory recorded ਖੇਮ ਕਰਨ, about 12 kilometres away, as its nearest town; the tehsil town of ਪੱਟੀ is about 25 kilometres away and the district headquarters at Tarn Taran about 55 kilometres. Villages recorded around it include ਦਿਬੀਪੁਰਾ, ਸਰਾਏ ਵਲਟੋਹਾ, ਦੌਡਪੁਰਾ, ਕੋਟਲੀ ਵਸਵਾ ਸਿੰਘ and ਘਰਯਲਾ.

People and work

The 2011 census counted 9,124 people in Valtoha, up from 7,191 in 2001: 4,769 men and 4,355 women living in 1,585 households, about 5.8 people to a household. Spread over 2,208 hectares, the density works out to about 413 people per square kilometre. The sex ratio was 913 women for every 1,000 men. Children up to the age of six numbered 1,221, about 13 per cent of the village. Scheduled Castes made up 2,484 people, about 27 per cent of the population, and no Scheduled Tribe population was recorded.

Literacy in 2011 stood at 59.34 per cent among residents aged seven and above, with men at 65.47 per cent and women at 52.7 per cent. The census recorded 3,278 workers, about 36 per cent of the village. Of the 2,795 main workers, the largest group, 1,056 people, were cultivators on their own land, ahead of 842 agricultural labourers and 758 other workers in trade, transport and services; a further 483 people were marginal workers, employed for only part of the year. Counting everyone, the village held 1,089 cultivators against 884 agricultural labourers, so most of Valtoha's farm work is still done by the families who own the land.

Land and farming

Farming covers most of Valtoha's land. Of the village's 2,208 hectares, 1,972 hectares were net sown area in the 2011 record, and every sown hectare was irrigated. Unusually for this canal-watered corner of Majha, all of that water came from below ground: wells and tube-wells irrigated the full 1,972 hectares. About 236 hectares were under non-agricultural uses such as the settlement, roads and ponds. The crops recorded for the village are wheat, paddy and cattle feed. Farm power supply was recorded at 8 hours a day, and an agricultural credit society was recorded in the village.

September 1965: the battle that reached Valtoha

Valtoha's name is written into the history of the 1965 war. When Pakistan's 1st Armoured Division and 11th Infantry Division crossed the border that September and captured Khem Karan, India's 4th Mountain Division fell back into a horseshoe-shaped defensive position whose focal point was AsalUttar, a village about four kilometres south-west of Valtoha. On 7 September a squadron of Pakistan's 6th Lancers captured Valtoha itself against stiff opposition, but with no infantry to hold the ground the tanks pulled back to their Khem Karan base at night, and a fierce tank battle followed in the dark.

That night Indian troops flooded the sugarcane fields inside the horseshoe. Over the three days of the Battle of Asal Uttar, 8 to 10 September 1965, the Patton tanks of the 1st Armoured Division were drawn into the bogged ground and stopped: more than 97 Pakistani tanks were destroyed and over 40 captured, against about 10 Indian tanks lost by India's account. The rows of captured Pattons gave the battlefield its nickname, Patton Nagar. It was in this battle that Company Quartermaster Havildar Abdul Hamid of the 4th Grenadiers knocked out several Patton tanks single-handed with a jeep-mounted recoilless gun before he was killed; he was awarded the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest gallantry award. Khem Karan town itself remained in Pakistani hands until the Tashkent Agreement returned it after the war.

Schools, health and daily services

Education in the village runs through one government primary school, one government middle school, one government secondary school and one government senior secondary school, so children can study in Valtoha up to Class 12, and directory listings add private primary and middle schools. Health facilities recorded inside the village in 2011 were a primary health sub-centre and a veterinary hospital, and the census detail adds a maternity and child welfare centre, a mobile health centre, five faith healers and eight medical shops, so day-to-day care is available locally even though the village has no hospital of its own.

The directory table records treated tap water in the village. Valtoha has both a post office and a sub post office, a commercial bank and a cooperative bank, and a PDS ration shop, an anganwadi centre and an ASHA health worker; the nearest ATM was recorded within five kilometres. Sports facilities and a birth and death registration office were also recorded, and domestic power supply was 12 hours a day.

Faith in Valtoha

No shrine of Valtoha appears in the national gurdwara and temple directories opened for this page, and religious life in the village is local, centred on its own gurdwara and temples. The places outsiders come to this corner of the border belt for are the railway halt in the village and the 1965 battlefield around AsalUttar.

Getting there

Valtoha has its own railway station, Valtoha (WLA), on the Amritsar to Khem Karan line of Northern Railway, 65 kilometres by rail from Amritsar and 12 kilometres short of the terminus at Khem Karan, between Gharyala and Rattoke Gudwara; DEMU trains run the line through the day. Both public and private bus services run in the village itself, on pucca roads; a district road passes through, and no national or state highway comes within ten kilometres.

What is the population of Valtoha?

The population of Valtoha was 9,124 at the 2011 census, living in 1,585 households in Patti tehsil of Tarn Taran district. It had grown from 7,191 in 2001.

What happened at Valtoha in 1965?

On 7 September 1965, during the Battle of Asal Uttar, a Pakistani tank squadron briefly captured Valtoha before withdrawing at night. Over the next three days the Indian Army destroyed or captured more than 130 Pakistani tanks in the flooded fields around neighbouring AsalUttar, one of the largest tank battles since the Second World War.

Does Valtoha have a railway station?

Yes. Valtoha station, code WLA, is a halt on the Amritsar to Khem Karan railway line, served by DEMU trains between Amritsar and Khem Karan.