Water scarcity across Jaipur as summer begins

It’s just the beginning of summers and Jaipur is already staring at water crisis. Reeling under water scarcity, residents of the state capital complain that their water supply has been erratic in last two weeks. While most of the residents claimed that they were not getting water supply for the last three days, many said that supply period has reduced to half.

Deepa Chauhan resident of Malviya Nagar said that they are getting interrupted water supply. She said, “We are suffering from water shortage from last ten days. To meet the water requirement we have to call for private tankers and are forced to pay from pockets. From last two weeks we have to call private water suppliers which charges around Rs 400 to Rs 500.”

Chauhan added, “Generally we used to get water supply for around one hours but from last few days we are getting it for 40 to 45 minutes.”

Residents of Vidyadhar Nagar claimed that from last four to five days the supply of water by the public health department(PHED) has completely stopped. Dinesh Kumar, a resident of Vidyadhar Nagar said , “From almost five days residents of entire area are derived from the water supply. We are forced to use water boosters to meet the water requirement.”

Kumar alleged that they complained the engineers of PHED about the interrupted water supply but nobody is resolving their water problems.

The residents of Walled City claimed that the water supply has been cut by almost 75 percent. “We are supposed to get water supply for atleast one hour a day but in reality we are getting only 15 minutes supply per day from the beginning of the summers that with low pressure,” said Santosh Sharma, native of Jauhari Bazar.

Additional chief engineer of PHD , Jaipur egion (II) Devraj Solanki said that due to less rainfall last year and shortage of water in Bisalpur Dam, the department has reduced the water supply.

“Last year on an average we were supplying 450MLD water to city which we have reduced to 307 mld per day. The present water level in Bisalpur Dam is 307.52 meters and its present volume is 5.22 TMC. If we will be able to continue with this average, we can feed the basic water requirement till August,” said Solanki.

The Bisalpur dam is consider as the life line of Jaipur and caters to about half the city’s drinking water requirement. But the supply through this dam is shrinking year by year. In 2017, it used to supply on average of 540 mld of water which reduced to 450 mld in 2018 and in 2019 it has reduced to 307mld.

Officials informed that, the Bisalpur dam has limited water, as the water from the dam is supplied to not only Jaipur, but also to Ajmer and Tonk.

At present, the situation is that, water from the Bisalpur dam can be supplied only till August. If there is no significant rainfall, it will not be possible to supply water from the dam, September onwards.

First Published: Apr 17, 2019 15:58 IST