Indore: Stoking a controversy, Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) has started dry run of laying water supply pipeline on Bypass without obtaining permission from National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
“We have just started the dry run of laying water pipeline on Rau Bypass in anticipation that NHAI will give us permission for the project,” IMC water works in-charge Balram Verma said. He said IMC’s request for laying pipeline is pending with NHAI. “If the permission is not given at the earliest, we will start laying pipeline work without NHAI’s permission,” Verma said.
Former municipal commissioner Manish Singh had expressed similar views in a meeting chaired by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan last month. He had said that IMC will not wait for NHAI’s consent to start installation work.
The IMC is required to take permission to install water supply pipelines along Bypass being constructed by NHAI. “We are in talks with NHAI officials for early permission,” Verma said, adding that he talked to highways and shipping minister’s personal assistant Vaibhav Dange about the IMC project and the trial run.
“Pipeline is also to be laid keeping in view city’s water needs till 2035. Till that year, the population of the city will be about 50 lakh,” Verma said. The IMC plans to lay pipeline with a width upto 1900 mm on a 24-kilometre stretch. The IMC says that once the pipeline is laid it would help in supply of water to 3 lakh people living in 29 villages and adjacent areas.