DJB rubbishes allegations of water crisis in Delhi as ‘political stunt’

On Tuesday, BJP Rajya Sabha member Vijay Goel had protested inside the DJB head office in Jhandewalan and protested before the chief executive officer of the water utility in his office, demanding an end to water shortage in Delhi.

The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) on Wednesday denied allegations levelled by the BJP of a looming water crisis in the national capital and that polluted water was being supplied to residents. It claimed that the allegations were a “political stunt”.

People fill their empty containers with water using lengths of hose pipe from a Delhi Jal Board tanker, at Sanjay Colony in Okhla Phase II, in New Delhi, India, on Wednesday, June 12, 2019. ((Photo by Burhaan Kinu/ Hindustan Times))

“All our treatment plants are running on full capacity. While other states are curtailing their supply, because of an shortage in the country, we are producing at least four percent beyond our capacity. The BJP’s dharna and allegations are just political stunts,” said Dinesh Mohaniya, vice chairman of DJB and an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA.

On Tuesday, BJP Rajya Sabha member Vijay Goel had protested inside the DJB head office in Jhandewalan and protested before the chief executive officer of the water utility in his office, demanding an end to water shortage in Delhi. The protest went till around 3 am on Wednesday. Later, police had to be called in to ensure safe passage to the DJB officials out of the building.

“The AAP government is misleading people on the water issue. People are getting dirty water at their homes. We are going to step up our protest from June 14,” Goel said on Wednesday.

The DJB, however, said that samples of the supplied water were tested regularly and there were no such cases of large scale contamination being supplied.

“If there is any contamination, it could have happened at the micro level, affecting only a few houses. We asked them to cite cases, which they could not,” Mohaniya said on Wednesday.

The outcome budget of the AAP government released last week stated that in 2018-19, at least 21,500 water samples were tested out of which 98% passed the quality test.