Ghaziabad: UP Jal Nigam plans water to Khoda from Upper Ganga Canal

The new plan will require laying of additional infrastructure, which will have to come up alongside the National Highway (NH) – 9, said officials

Ghaziabad: In a bid to ensure treated Ganga water for Khoda, which is devoid of tapped water supply, the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam will soon send a proposal to the state government to provide an additional 50 million litres per day (MLD) of Ganga water from the Upper Ganga Canal, officials said on Wednesday.

Khoda is home to about 45,000 households, and the locality’s daily demand is around 38MLD. But only 10MLD is currently supplied—mostly through tankers and ad hoc arrangements, said officials. (HT Archive/Sakib Ali)

Notably, Khoda is home to about 45,000 households, and the locality’s daily demand is around 38MLD. But only 10MLD is currently supplied—mostly through tankers and ad hoc arrangements, said officials.

Only about 500–600 households near NH-9 have piped water connections, they added.

The latest move to send a proposal comes after a proposed ₹183 crore project got stalled after the Noida authority in July denied consent to share its portion of Ganga water supplied through the Ganga water treatment plants at Pratap Vihar, Ghaziabad. The project, cleared under the AMRUT 2.0 scheme in December 2023, aimed to bring 50 MLD of treated water to Khoda.

“After the denial by the Noida authority, we started to look for alternatives. Now, we have decided that 50MLD of Ganga water will be supplied directly from the Upper Ganga Canal through an infrastructure network. For this, we need approval from the state government, and we will soon send a proposal to this effect,” said chief engineer, UP Jal Nigam (Ghaziabad zone), Rajesh Kumar Pankaj.

“Since the NH-9 and Delhi-Meerut Expressway are already operational, there will be a host of clearances required for the project, and planning such infrastructure will not be an easy task. However, we are committed to provide water to Khoda,” Pankaj added.

The Pratap Vihar site has three water treatment plants with a total capacity of 480MLD of treated water for Ghaziabad. Of this, 330MLD is allocated to Noida, 108MLD to Ghaziabad municipal corporation, and 42MLD to UP Avas Vikas, said UP Jal Nigam officials.

“Residents in Khoda are aggrieved and angered by the promises made to them for the provision of drinking water. Residents are forced to shell out extra money to get water from private tankers, bottled water suppliers, and boring of submersibles. We will soon launch a fresh agitation for drinking water, a basic necessity,” said Deepak Joshi, convener of the Khoda Residents’ Association.

Residents conducted a 13-day hunger strike for water last year, and later in June, 2024, they set out for a cycle-yatra to meet the UP chief minister. They were, however, stopped midway in Amroha and had to return.

On Joshi’s complaint on the chief minister’s IGRS portal, the officials of the UP Jal Nigam, in a reply on July 17, confirmed that the ₹183 crore project was stalled after denial by the Noida authority.

HT had published a story about the development on July 22.

The Khoda Nagar Palika has a huge voters’ base and falls under the jurisdiction of the Sahibabad assembly constituency.