Thursday, Mar 24, 2005
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By Sujay Mehdudia
NEW DELHI, MARCH 23. The dream might just be turning sour even before the scorching summer sets in. The uncertainty over making the 140 MGD Sonia Vihar water treatment plant operational from May this year continues to haunt the Delhi Government with the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, yesterday refraining from giving any deadline for start of supply to the water-starved areas of Delhi from this plant. In a complete U-turn, the Chief Minister declared in the Delhi Assembly yesterday that 140 MGD water from the Sonia Vihar plant would flow only though the courtesy of the Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh governments. It is for the first time that Ms. Dikshit refused to give a clear deadline for making the plant operational as there seems uncertainty over supply of water to this plant from the Tehri dam in Uttaranchal. On all earlier occasions inside and outside the Vidhan Sabha, the Chief Minister had made it clear that the plant would be in production by this summer. During the past six months, the deadlines have wavered from March to May 2005. The very fact that Ms. Dikshit has been forced to adopt a soft line towards the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government and its inability to get water released from its own Congress-led Government in Uttaranchal indicates the problems that the Sheila Dikshit Government is facing in getting Ganga water to Delhi. What is the most worrying part of the whole affair is that the Sonia Vihar plant has been handed over to the private company, Degremont, and the agreement clearly states that if the Delhi Government is unable to supply water to the plant and its remains non-operational, it would have to pay Rs. 50,000 fine per day putting the extra burden on the exchequer and the taxpayer. As such the functioning of the Delhi Jal Board has also come under scrutiny during the current Vidhan Sabha session. The very fact that massive under-valuation of assets of the Delhi Jal Board has come to light indicates that the Government is promoting tax evasion rather than abiding by the law as stated by the senior BJP leader, Harsh Vardhan. "On one hand the Government is issuing huge advertisements asking citizens to pay property tax or face action, on the other it is itself indulging in massive under-valuation and thereby avoiding paying the right amount of tax on property. Someone should be hauled up for the scam that is bigger than the power privatisation scam,'' he added. On the other hand, the news on the other major project, the Munak Canal parallel water channel project in Haryana, is also not very good. The project, envisaging construction of a concrete water channel to carry water from Haryana to prevent loss due to evaporation, is running far behind schedule and is unlikely to be completed on time. The project under the original plan is to be completed by May 2006, which now looks like a distant dream. Till date only 35 per cent of the project has been completed even three years after work started. At this pace, the project is likely to be behind schedule by at least two years, further aggravating the water problem in the Capital.
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