Jaitley addresses water woes, proposes 500 water ATMS

With an effort to resolve water crisis in Delhi, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Friday allocated Rs 1,249 crore for water supply. However, the budget does not speak of any subsidy on water, like the one extended by the previous AAP-led government.

An amount of Rs 711 crore has been granted for piped water supply in 50 unauthorised colonies and construction of sewerage system in 95 such colonies.

With this, 500 new water ATMs and a number of sewage and water treatment plants have been sanctioned. The government has also tried to curtail the water crisis and pollution of river Yamuna in the budget.

Four new sewage treatment plants were also approved by the Centre which will help in cleaning of river Yamuna. After commissioning of the STPs at Pappan Kalan, Nilothi, Yamuna Vihar and Delhi Gate by the end of this year with which the total sewage treatment capacity of Delhi will increase from 604 to 684 million gallons a day (MGD).

The long pending demand of 80 MGD raw water from neighbouring state of Haryana is also likely to be over soon. In the budget, the Centre has emphasised on functioning of the parallel canal from Munak to Haiderpur after resolving issues with the Haryana government.

‘This will make available 80 MGD raw water for newly constructed water treatment plants at Dwarka (40 MGD), Okhla (20 MGD) and Bawana (20 MGD) for a population of about 35 lakhs living in South, South-West, West and North-West parts of Delhi,’ Jaitely said in his speech in Parliament.

An initial amount of Rs 50 crore has already been approved for commissioning of long pending project of Renuka Dam in Uttarakhand which will provide 50 MGD water to the city.