To meet its water demands, the Delhi Government on Saturday signed an Inter - State cooperation MoU with the Himachal Pradesh Government. The MoU states that the Government of Himachal Pradesh will provide regular daily supply of 368 cusecs from November to February and 268 cusecs from March to June every year.
Elaborating the project, Government official said after creation of the upstream storages the supply shall be upgraded to 421 cusecs throughout the year.
According to Government officials, there are places in Himachal where a lot of snow fall is happening for quite some years and therefore exploring the opportunities of snow harvesting for the first time and this particular project also incentivises our activities that we can think of even protecting or harvesting more and more water in different forms available.
The MoU was signed by Dr RN Batta, Secretary Himachal Pradesh and Manisha Saxena , Principal Secretary (Urban Dvelopment) while Delhi Jal Board , CEO Nikhil Kumar was there.
Nikhil Kumar, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), DJB said, " As we all know, without water there can be no life and with the growing population trend, water scarcity is a challenging issue for the entire country. Water is one resource which is finite and irreplaceable, keeping that in mind; I feel that the MoU that we are signing today will be a trend setter as far as the country is concerned." "We are very appreciative of the initiatives and efforts taken by the Himachal Government in it. Further, this can set a benchmark for other states in the country to come together and try and formalise such understanding and agreements where excess and surplus water can be exchanged."