Rampant water theft in Bengal, 20000 punctures in pipe network: Minister
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has ordered a survey to find out the quantum of the water-theft problem in the state
Kolkata: Kusum Acharya, 57, a resident of Baksha village at Chanditala in West Bengal’s Hooghly district, has to stand in a queue every morning to collect drinking water from the village tube-well as she doesn’t get water from the tap installed in her house.
“Earlier a trickle of water used to come out of the tap. But now even that has stopped. For the past nine months we have been depending on the local pond or standing in the queue to collect water from the village tube-well. Several families in our village are facing the same problem. Repeated appeals to the panchayat have not yielded any results,” Acharya said.
Theft of drinking water from underground pipelines has become a major hurdle for the Trinamool Congress government to fulfil its poll promise of providing piped drinking water to 20 million households in West Bengal.
Supplying piped drinking water to every household was in the manifestos of both the TMC and the BJP in the 2021 elections. The BJP’s manifesto proposed setting up a ₹10,000 crore fund to provide drinking water to every household by 2024 while the TMC in its manifesto promised to provide piped drinking water to 20 million households by 2026.
“The government has announced the Jal Swapno Scheme to provide piped drinking water to the entire 20 million households in West Bengal in the next five years with a budget outlay of ₹58,000 Crore,” the TMC’s manifesto of 2021 claimed.
Three years down the line, villagers complain that they do not get water from the taps installed in their household.
“We have already installed drinking water pipelines to around 9.4 million households till around December 5. But allegations have poured in from several villages that even though the pipelines have been laid, drinking water hasn’t reached the households. One of the major reasons behind this is theft of water from these pipelines,” said a senior government official.
Irked with such allegations pouring in from almost every district, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee held a meeting with senior bureaucrats of the state earlier this month, officials said. The chief minister ordered a survey to find out the quantum of the problem of water-theft.
“We have detected around 20,170 points from where water was being stolen. Holes were being made in the underground pipelines to steal water to supply hotels, petrol pumps, construction sites, ice-cream factories, poultry farms, roadside garages and to agricultural farms. We have lodged around 480 FIRs and action has been initiated,” Pulak Roy, state public health engineering minister.
The maximum number of such cases have been detected in East Midnapore (3893), followed by South 24 Parganas (3879) and North 24 Parganas (3031). At least 2603 cases have been detected in East Burdwan and 2316 cases in Nadia districts.
“The chief minister flagged concerns saying that not only was this theft of drinking water illegal but it was also a dangerous trend as any kind of contamination in the drinking water could lead to a major disaster,” said a senior PHE official.
Officials also said that in many areas it was found that even though the pipelines were installed there was no source of water in the vicinity. It has been found that in many cases the detailed project report to install the pipelines was prepared without conducting any soil test or checking the source of water.
“The chief minister in an administrative meeting held on December 2 has directed to identify the contractors who were involved in preparing such faulty DPRs and initiate action against them. They are likely to be black-listed,” said an official.
With the next assembly elections due in 2026 the state government has now set a target to restore these gaps by April 2025 so that the promise of supplying piped drinking water could be fulfilled ahead of the polls. The state PHE department has even floated two numbers for citizens to report problems of water theft.
The BJP, however, has already stepped up its attack against the TMC -government over the issue.
“West Bengal is lagging behind other states in the Jal Jeevan Mission. Had the state government cooperated and implemented the flagship projects of the Centre, the face of West Bengal would have undergone a sea change. The BJP doesn’t differentiate when it comes to infrastructure projects. It is the TMC which does this and this is taking West Bengal backwards,” said Samik Bhattacharya, BJP spokesperson.