Residents collect drinking water from a tanker amid ongoing water crisis in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)
Delhi Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Saturday hit back at Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena for holding the AAP government responsible for the city’s water crisis, claiming he failed to acknowledge that the shortage was mainly due to BJP-ruled Haryana blocking 100 MGD of water.
Bharadwaj also alleged that Saxena was functioning like a “BJP L-G” and not the L-G of Delhi.
The Delhi urban development minister, however, agreed with Saxena that governance needs a consistent endeavour to deliver for the people by building consensus.
“But we are unable to understand why the L-G does not hold the BJP-led Haryana government to the same yardstick despite being fully aware that the Haryana government has been blocking over 100 MGD of Delhi’s rightful share of water for the past many days,” he said in a statement.
As a constitutional functionary, blaming the ruling party in Delhi of playing politics while “turning a blind eye” to the hard facts of falling water supply to the city by the BJP-led Haryana government or the Arvind Kejriwal dispensation’s efforts to modernize the national capital’s water distribution network shows Saxena is not functioning as the LG of Delhi but like a “BJP LG”, Bharadwaj charged.
Delhi is dependent on Uttar Pradesh and Haryana for supply of drinking water.
Citing Delhi Jal Board (DJB) data, Bharadwaj said the national capital was producing its full share of 1,005 MGD of water till June 6.
“There was no water crisis in Delhi until June 6. However, the water supply to Delhi continuously started falling after June 6, reaching 958 MGD on June 10 and an all-time low of 888 MGD on June 22,” he said.
Bharadwaj said there is no reduction in the share of water being supplied to Delhi by Uttar Pradesh. The entire shortfall of over 100 MGD is due to reduced water supply by the Haryana government, he claimed.
“This is the real issue behind the present water crisis. Never in Delhi’s history, its water supply been blocked in this manner by the Haryana government. Yet the L-G does not even acknowledge these hard facts and data in his statement,” the minister said.
Bharadwaj said Saxena “conveniently ignored” the tremendous efforts of the Kejriwal government to modernize Delhi’s distribution system and prevent water losses in the last nine years.
He highlighted that to reduce leakage during water transmission from Haryana to Delhi, DJB has spent about Rs 500 crore for constructing a Carried Lined Channel that reduced losses from 30 per cent to five per cent.
A total of 3,500 km of old pipelines have been replaced (437 km annually) in the last eight years and 7,300 km of new pipelines were laid in the past decade to stop illegal tapping and water theft, Bharadwaj said.
The Leak Detection Cell has also been strengthened, he said, adding that it has detected and fixed around 2,000 leakages in the last six months.
The minister said the L-G chose to raise the bogey of leakage and tanker mafia in his statement.
“If this is the cause of the present water crisis, did this not exist before June 6 when there was no water crisis in Delhi? For the last two weeks, teams of Delhi Police, which report to the L-G, have constantly been patrolling water pipelines of DJB,” Bharadwaj said.
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