Delhi govt enables GPS in water tankers to eliminate ‘water mafia’, ensure transparent supply

CM Gupta said the technology will help prevent leakages and enable tracking of tanker locations on an IT dashboard at the DJB headquarters

The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) will operate 1,111 GPS-enabled water tankers this summer to bridge the demand-supply gap and to rein in the “tanker mafia”, chief minister Rekha Gupta said on Sunday.

Water supply through a tanker in 2024. (HT Archive)

Flagging off these tankers at a ground in Burari, CM Gupta said the technology will help prevent leakages and enable tracking of tanker locations on an IT dashboard at the DJB headquarters.

Rapping the previous Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government for alleged lapses in the tanker system, she said: “In the previous government, there was a leakage in the entire system in the name of tanker mafias. There was corruption. Water was sent to the common people, but no one knew where it went. The new government of Delhi is dedicated to providing clean water. Today, 1,111 tankers are being sent; they are GPS-enabled so that they can be tracked. The routes of every tanker can be recorded. People will be able to monitor the location with the help of the tanker app.”

To be sure, last year, 961 tankers were deployed by the DJB, essentially meaning the number of tankers has been upped by 150 and all of them fit with tracking technology. Delhi generally has a water demand of 1,290 million gallons per day (mgd), of which around 1,000mgd are filled by water treatment plants, tubewells and Ranney wells. Tankers play a key role in addressing the gap in areas suffering from short supply.

Gupta said that the GPS provision was a step towards complete transparency. “This is not the final solution, we will work on a new town plan to provide water from the tap to every resident,” Gupta said at the event, which was dotted with tankers.

She said that the government has taken several positive steps in this regard. “In its budget for the 2025-26 fiscal, the Delhi government has allocated ₹9,000 crore for the water sector. This includes allocation for installing smart meters, reviving water bodies, laying pipelines and desilting drains, among others,” Gupta said.

Water minister Parvesh Verma, environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, and several BJP MPs and MLAs were also present at the event.

Parvesh Verma said the live tracking mechanism was a model of good governance and transparency. “Some of these tankers are old, but all these are fitted with GPS. People can track the location of the tankers on their mobile phones like we do on food delivery apps. What the ‘AAP-da sarkar’ could not do in so many years, we did it in 10 weeks,” he said.

Verma said that “sensors will also be installed to check if a tanker has unloaded water, and how much water it has unloaded at its designated destination.”

A water-stressed city, Delhi faces acute water shortages in peak summer, especially between the last week of May and the first half of June. Areas where the water pipeline system has not been developed as well as the colonies facing supply shortage episodes are supplied water through tankers. According to last year’s summer action plan, 961 tankers were deployed during the peak season.

Water minister Verma said that the state government eventually plans to eliminate the tanker system for water distribution in several areas of the national capital. He said that the long-term plan of the government was to provide water straight from the tap. “Our long-term plan is that every house in Delhi gets water straight from the tap so that the tanker system can be gradually weaned off...This is the transparency and good governance model of our government,” Verma said.

Attacking the launch, the AAP accused the BJP-led Delhi government of “spreading misinformation and rebranding past initiatives as new.”

AAP Delhi chief Saurabh Bharadwaj said that BJP was falsely claiming the launch of GPS-enabled water tankers, and that it has been operational since 2015. “The BJP government is misleading Delhiites, wasting taxpayer money, and diverting resources for publicity stunts instead of addressing the real issues facing the capital. In 2022, when I was the vice-chairman of the DJB, tankers were already equipped with GPS,” he said.