Congress to launch stir over water crisis

New Delhi: The Delhi Congress will start a month-long “Jal Satyagraha” agitation from from June 1 in all the Assembly constituencies of the city, especially those which have a large concentration of JJ clusters and unauthorised and resettlement colonies, for the AAP government alleged failure to provide clean drinking water to the people and also its failure to end the vicious grip of the tanker mafia.

Talking to reporters, Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken said the national capital was facing an acute water shortage despite the fact that chief minister Arvind Kejriwal himself was the chairman of the Delhi Jal Board. He said Mr Kejriwal had promised to provide free drinking water to people, and the situation was only going to get worse in the coming days. He said instead of putting an end to the rule of the water tanker mafia, the government has only increased the number of tankers which points to corruption and a major scam in the DJB.

Mr Maken said during the Congress regime under Sheila Dikshit, the water treatment capacity was increased from 591mgd to 906mgd while the Kejriwal government did not make any increase in the water treatment capacity, despite sharp increase in the city’s population.

Mr Kejriwal said the AAP government hired 56 more tankers than the previous years, thus nullifying Mr Kerjiwal’s claim of ending the hold of the tanker mafia in water distribution. He said the GPS-enabled Tanker Tracking System used to provide information such as the movement of water tankers in a particular area and their arrivals, the quantity of water filled in the tankers and people could access the DJB website to track the tankers.

Mr Maken said the Kejriwal government had spent crores of rupees on advertisements on launching of tanker tracking system. He said the Congress government had initiated the Water Tanker Tracking System in 2013  to monitor the movement of water tankers to control the tanker mafia when it awarded the contract to DIMS. He said Mr Kejriwal should answer why his government ended the tranker tracking system, instead of ending the reign of the tanker mafia.

Quoting the DJB website,  he said  the last update was on the tanker tracking system was on April 7 last year..

Mr Maken said the quality of water supply to the citizens should be as per BIS 10500-2012, during 2017 the per cent of non-satisfactory samples collected and tested by the quality control personnel was 2.3 per cent which increased to 3.99 per cent in 2018. He said these facts show that several areas in the capital must be drinking non-potable water. He said this fact can also be corroborated from the complaints received on the helpline during 2018; it increased in almost all the five divisions of the DJB.

The Congress leader said that the statistics of different types of complaints received by the DJB in the last two years during April-October months from its five zones gives out shocking figures. He said “No Water Complaints” in 2016 were 79,258 which jumped to 84,307 in 2017, while water contamination complaints rose from 25,069 in 2016 to 37,223 in 2017. The number of Sewer Blockage Complaints rose from 64,141 in 2016 to 1,08584  in 2017. He said the south division of the DJB received the highest no of “No Water-Related Complaints”, while the east division witnessed 156 per cent increase. Total complaints too increased significantly.

Mr  Maken said complaints of contaminated water received increased in almost all the divisions of the DJB. The East division of DJB witnessed 163 per cent, while the total complaints received increased by 12,154. He said the sewer blockage complaints too increased significantly. Complaints received by West zone and East zone increased by 220 per cent and 301 per cent respectively, and during April-Oct total complaints too increased by 69 per cent.