Congress to hold demonstrations in 280 blocks over Delhi water crisis

New Delhi: The Congress will hold demonstrations in all 280 blocks of Delhi to protest against the severe water shortage gripping the national capital, interim chief of the party's Delhi unit Devender Yadav said on Thursday.

He said residents of the respective areas and block- and booth-level Congress workers will participate in the demonstrations to "open the eyes of the BJP and the AAP governments" to the plight of the people.

Claiming that Delhi faces a water shortage of 50 million gallons per day (MGD), the city government on Thursday urged people not to waste water.

As parts of the city grapple with the acute shortage, the Supreme Court has asked the city's AAP government to approach the Upper Yamuna River Board for additional water on humanitarian grounds.

Water shortage during summers has become a recurring feature due to failure of the city government and the administration. The BJP government in Haryana and the AAP government in Delhi only indulge in blame games, Yadav alleged.

It is a fact that Delhi is overdependent on Haryana for its water needs and, with the BJP in power in Haryana, the people of the national capital have to face severe water shortage every year. Both the BJP and the AAP governments keep blaming each other for the crisis instead of taking effective steps to address the shortage, he claimed.

Yadav appealed to all Congress block presidents to hold demonstrations against the BJP and the AAP governments that, he said, are responsible for the shortage.

He also urged them to tell the people that the water shortage is because of shadow boxing between the BJP and the AAP governments.

The Congress will stand by the people of Delhi in their fight for potable water, he added.

Yadav has also written to the central vigilance commissioner, seeking a probe into the Rs 17,575 crore scam in the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) as the primary reason for the shortage in Delhi is leakage from the DJB and the water is being diverted for the "tanker mafia" to misappropriate, a statement said.

Yadav, in his letter to the vigilance commissioner, has pointed out that there has been a significant uptick in the volume of leakage in recent years, as indicated by government data, with the figures climbing from 42 per cent in 2019-20 to 58.28 per cent in 2022-23.

This 16.28 percentage point surge over a span of three years, despite the DJB spending substantially from its budgetary allocation for replacement and installation of supply lines, is deeply worrisome, he said.