Pithampur water supply project gets a push

The Madhya Pradesh government has come out with fresh tenders for selecting a consultant for the Narmada-Kshipra link project, one of the early bird projects under Pithampur investment node of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), for supplying water to the Pithampur industrial area.

The Madhya Pradesh government has come out with fresh tenders for selecting a consultant for the Narmada-Kshipra link project, one of the early bird projects under Pithampur investment node of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), for supplying water to the Pithampur industrial area.

An earlier round of bidding in February this year had failed to bear fruit. "No company could meet the criteria during an earlier round of tendering process, so bids have been invited again," an official of the Audyogik Kendra Vikas Nigam (AKVN) Indore said.

For the past two months, the industry in Pithampur has been facing severe water shortage and depends on water tankers to meet its daily requirement.

While the area has a total demand of 18-20 MLD (million litres a day) of water, the project will initially supply 30 MLD and will be scaled up to 60 MLD and then 90 MLD once the project becomes fully operational.

Therefore, the industry association wants the government to expedite the Narmada-Kshipra link project that promises solve the area's water problems for the next 25 years.

In September 2013, the DMIC Trust cleared the Pithampur water supply project to lay pipeline from the Narmada-Kshipra link. An earlier deadline of completing the first phase of the project by March 31, 2016, has now been pushed back.

As reported earlier in HT, several units in Pithampur, especially pharmaceutical units, have had to cut down on production due to shortage of water.

The only option for the industrial area other than relying on tankers is drawing underground water, which is only feasible for units with the ability to filter the hard water.