DLF residents protest against water and power crises

Several areas of Gurgaon, including DLF City, are struggling with continuous water shortage and power cuts for the last two weeks.

A group of residents of upscale areas such as DLF City, Ardee City, Sushant Lok and Sun City, staged a protest outside the deputy commissioner’s office to highlight water and power crisis in their areas for the last few weeks.

Residents of DLF Phase-1 and 3 on Monday protest against the Gurgaon administration over the acute to water crisis and long outages. (Parveen Kumar/HT)

About 80 residents assembled at the deputy commissioner’s office in mini secretariat around 11am and staged a demonstration holding placards and banners blaming the administration for not attending to their grievances. They also held buckets to symbolise their water woes.

“We have written a number of letters to the deputy commissioner and director of town and country planning without any reply...the officials never answer our letters about the problems that we face,” RS Rathee, president of Gurgaon Citizen’s Council -- a residents’ welfare body that organised the protest said.

As the deputy commissioner is out of station, residents handed over a memorandum addressing chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar to sub-divisional magistrate (Sadar) Sushil Sarwan. The have sough Khattar’s intervention in the perennial problem that has failed to move the district authorities so far. Residents said they are staging the protest as a final option.

Residents said that the director of town and country planning department has to monitor the licenced builders to ensure that the residents’ rights are not infringed.

“The property owners have paid external development charges and internal development charges well in advance. But, they are still deprived of basic facilities,” Dhruv Bansal of DLF City Phase 1 block A, said.

Several areas of Gurgaon, including DLF City, are struggling with continuous water shortage and power cuts for the last two weeks.

Officials of the Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda) and Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHVBN) have been passing the buck over the power and water crisis in Gurgaon. While the Huda and builders blame the discom for erratic power supply at the water pumping stations, the DHVBN has been blaming the workers’ strike and the thunderstorm for the power crisis.