As the mercury soars, the Delhi government and Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena clashed over the issues of water supply and sewerage connections on Friday.

At a recent meeting of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Saxena came down heavily on the Delhi Jal Board for “deliberately” denying drinking water and sewerage connections to slum dwellers.

“DJB Vice-Chairman and AAP MLA Somnath Bharti, who is also an Authority Member, was present in the meeting. Requests from DDA for the supply of water and laying of sewer lines is pending with the DJB since as early as 2013 in the case of Kalkaji and 2017 in the case of Jailorwala Bagh,” a senior DDA official present in meeting said.

Bharti said that the DJB was short of water to supply. “The DDA was put to shame because I brought to the notice of the L-G, during the meeting, that the DDA is not providing NOCs and permissions for requests like installation of tubewells on DDA land,” he said.
The L-G, according to the DDA official, citing the welfare of the poor accused the DJB of putting them to political ransom and pointed out that just during the last month he had allotted 17 pieces of land to the DJB for its various projects.

In response, Water Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj wrote to Saxena to instruct officials in the DDA to provide requisite NOCs related to tubewells, waterbodies or lakes so that water augmentation projects can be completed in time and the water deficit be reduced.“You are also requested to use your good office to get additional raw water from the Government of India, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana for the people of Delhi,” Bharadwaj wrote.

“Thousands of slum dwellers from the Kalkaji Bhoomiheen Camp, who were shifted to modern multi-storey flats in November last year, are facing acute water crisis with the DJB refusing to provide drinking water to the occupants of these flats. The DDA has been supplying water to these people through tankers,” the DDA official alleged.

The AAP government, the official claimed, had been “sitting over” the DDA’s request to provide water supply to the project that houses more than 2,000 families, despite approving drawings for laying of pipelines for water supply and sewerage in 2019 as per the DDA’s demand to this effect in 2014.

Similarly, for the Jailorwala Bagh in situ rehabilitation project that is ready for possession by another 1,800 slum dweller families, the DJB has not even cleared the drawings till now for the laying down of water and sewer pipelines, despite the request having been made by the DDA as far back as in 2017,” the official alleged.

The DDA official said that at the meeting the matter was taken up by the L-G where he questioned the DJB’s “deliberate stonewalling” that was depriving poor people with something as basic as water, terming it “unfortunate” and requesting Bharti to “avoid playing politics when it came to the welfare of the people of Delhi”.

On his part, Bharti said Delhi has a deficit of around 350 MGD of water and additional sources to augment water supply were needed to bridge this water deficit.

We are putting the output of STPs (sewage treatment plants) to artificial or natural water bodies or lakes to recharge the groundwater table. A majority of water bodies are with the DDA and we have been asking for NOCs from the DDA,” he said.

We have been asking for NOCs to install tubewells on the Yamuna floodplains. These NOCs are not coming. Why are they sitting on these NOCs and doing politics on this? The question is, from where do we bring water? The L-G should take the initiative to write to UP and Haryana to ask for an increase in raw water supply,” Bharti added.