DJB assures of end to drinking water problems in Dwarka

The Delhi Jal Board has told the high court that the drinking water problem in Dwarka would end with the commissioning of a water treatment plant in a few months.

The Delhi Jal Board has told the high court that the drinking water problem in Dwarka would end with the commissioning of a water treatment plant in a few months.

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“Ninety per cent of the civil work for the project is over and we have already invested R800 crore towards it,” the public utility’s lawyer Sumeet Pushkarna told a bench headed by Chief Justice D Murugesan. The project, Pushkarna said, will cater to housing societies and the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation urging the court to direct the utility to solve the water crisis faced by housing societies in Dwarka.

He said the problem would further ease if the promised amounts of water are received from Haryana. The utility said the work on the Munak canal by the Haryana irrigation department is set to be completed soon. The court has been asking the Delhi Government to begin dialogue with Haryana to ensure supply of water.

Pushkarna said a special plan was being prepared with Japanese assistance for water management, distribution and increased use of treated sewage water. The Delhi Development Authority and the DJB are in a long-running blame game over the scarcity of drinking water in Dwarka.

The DJB says till the treatment plant becomes functional, the DDA must supply drinking water to societies in tankers for which there needs to be separate storage facility. The DJB alleged drinking water supplied to most societies was unfit for drinking as the DDA was mixing 3.5 mgd of drinking water supplied by it with 6 mgd of underground water.

The DDA, on the other hand, said the situation could improve only if the DJB commissioned its water treatment plant.

The court had, during a hearing in August, slammed the civic agencies for unplanned concretisation of Delhi without caring about arrangements for water supply. The court had said that the government goes on regularising colonies without thinking whether there is provision for water for the inhabitants.