The Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena on Friday launched a scathing attack against the AAP led Delhi Government over the water crisis, while calling the attitude of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Government ‘irresponsible’
In a letter, he said, “For the last few days, Delhi Government’s extremely irresponsible attitude regarding water has been seen in Delhi. Today, women, children, old and young people are seen running behind tankers for a bucket of water, risking their lives. Probably no one would have imagined that such heart-rending scenes would be seen in the country’s capital. But, the government is blaming other states for its failures. The promise of 24-hour water supply in Delhi by the Chief Minister has proved to be a hoax till now.”
While claiming that Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are continuously supplying their allotted quota of water to Delhi, he claimed, “Despite this, the biggest reason for the terrible shortage of water in Delhi today is that 54 per cent of the water being produced has no accounting. 40 per cent of the water is wasted during supply due to old and dilapidated pipelines. Despite thousands of crores of rupees being spent by the Delhi government in the last ten years, neither the old pipelines could be repaired or replaced, nor enough new pipelines laid. The worst part is that this water is stolen and sold to the poor people by the tanker mafia.”
Highlighting the disparity between the distribution between the rich and the poor, he said, “It is unfortunate that while on one hand, 550 litres of water is being supplied per person on an average in the rich areas of Delhi, only 15 litres of water is supplied per person on an average in the villages and slums.”
He further stated, “I have been told that even today, except Wazirabad, all the water treatment plants in Delhi are producing more water than their capacity. The Wazirabad treatment plant is not able to work to its full capacity because the reservoir of the barrage, where the water coming from Haryana is stored, is almost completely filled with silt. Due to this, the capacity of this reservoir, which used to be 250 million gallons, has reduced to only 16 million gallons.”
