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Delhi lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena on Tuesday shot an explosive open letter to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, flagging water scarcity in poor settlements of the national capital, which according to him have ‘exacerbated over the last decade’.
The L-G hit out at Delhi’s water resources minister Atishi, accusing her of using the killing of a woman in East Delhi’s Shahdara, for ‘narrow and partisan political goals.’ In his open letter, the L-G said,”Having underlined the inadequate supply of water as the cause behind the incident, Atishi has ironically indicted her own government of more than 09 years. Her note indeed is a prima facie admission of guilt, inaction and inefficiency over the past almost 10 years.”
The lieutenant governor slammed Atishi for attacking the chief secretary, Delhi Jal Board (DJB) chief executive officer, officers of finance and urban development department.
“It has almost now become habitual on part of your ministers to blame officers for their own failures, be it in the field of health, hospitals, sanitation, education or water supply,” the L-G wrote.
“I wish she had demonstrated maturity and restraint, which is expected of a person occupying high office,” he added.
The Delhi L-G cited the economic survey tabled by Atishi, which stated that over the last 10 yerars, the water treatment capacity grew marginally from 906 MGD to 946 MGD, barely 4.4 percent increase.
“During the same period, the population of the city has grown significantly by 15 percent. The overall shortfall in water supply amounts to about 290 MGD. Of the total water being supplied, 120 MGD comes from ground water extraction, which is also a gross exaggeration,” he added.
“I am sure that you are aware that of the sixteen Ranney wells, five are non-functional. Similarly a large number of tubewells are also dysfunctional,” the
L-G added.
In his open letter, the L-G pointed out that the percentage of ‘unaccounted water’, which is a sum of water leakages by way of transmission & distribution losses, water theft and non-payment of dues, witnessed a sharp increase from 45 percent in 2015 to 58 percent in 2022-2023.
The L-G pointed out that more than two crore out of 2.5 crore people in the city are “deprived of drinking water supply in varying degrees, especially in unauthorised colonies, slum clusters and to a lesser extent, even in organized developed colonies”.
“Instead of fixing the iniquitous water supply, you and your ministers created a chimera of free water. Deception of people has been mastered into an art form by you and your ministers,” L-G Saxena wrote.
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