Drinking water for every jhuggi?

New Delhi: In a move which is bound to pay political dividends to the Aam Aadmi Party in the coming municipal elections, the city government is in the process of providing tapped drinking water connections to each jhuggi dweller in the national capital.

A proposal to this effect drafted by the Delhi Jal Board will soon be placed before the city Cabinet. Once the proposal is cleared by the cabinet, it will be sent for approval to the lieutenant-governor. The proposal will finally be implemented after necessary amendments made in the Delhi Jal Board Act are passed by the Delhi Assembly.

The government’s proposed move is bound to work in favour of AAP, which is going to contest in all the 272 wards of the three BJP-ruled municipal corporations. The move will help 4,18,282 households living in 685 jhuggi clusters to get piped drinking water across the city. The estimated cost of the entire project will work out to be anything between Rs 20 crore to Rs 30 crore.

Political pundits are of the view that the municipal polls will be a testing time for AAP, which will be contesting its first major elections across the city after its landslide victory in 2015, in which it won 67 of the 70 Assembly seats leaving BJP with only three and completely decimating Congress, which drew a blank.

While AAP recently won five of the 13 wards in the municipal bypolls, it faces a major challenge in the coming general municipal elections, where it will be facing BJP, which has been ruling the three corporations for about 10 years. A senior AAP functionary said: “So what if BJP is in power in the three corporations. In our first election in 2013, we restricted Congress to just eight Assembly seats that too when it had ruled the city for 15 consecutive years. You will definitely see AAP’s magic in the civic polls.”

The AAP government’s move to provide water connections to jhuggi dwellers is being interpreted in the political circles as an attempt to reach out to a large chunk of people who had voted “wholeheartedly”  for AAP  in the previous elections. The party gained popularity after its elected government provided 20,000 litres of drinking water a month free of cost to each household in Delhi. Also, the government gave a 50 per cent monthly subsidy to those consumers who consumed up to 400 units of electricity.

At present, jhuggi dwellers get drinking water either through water hydrants or mobile tankers. “Once section 9 of the Delhi Jal Board Act is amended, all the jhuggi dwellers will be provided piped water,” a senior bureaucrat told this newspaper.

At present, about 83 per cent households of Delhi have access to piped water supply. Water production during summer season is maintained at 890 to 905 million gallons a day. Water is supplied  to about 18 million people through  a water supply network comprising 11,540 kms long pipelines. The DJP has also added 407 new stainless steel water containers fitted with GPS devices to supply round-the-clock drinking water in Delhi.