Rethink 24x7 water supply under Amrut: Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to PM Modi

New Delhi: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar kicked up a row on Tuesday, as he told Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a function that the Centre should rethink on giving 24-hour drinking water supply under the AMRUT scheme to the urban areas in the state, as it could lead to misuse of water by people and the depletion of groundwater levels.

Kumar said this as Modi inaugurated the AMRUT mission for the Siwan and Chapra municipal corporations and laid the foundation stone for the water supply system for Munger and Jamalpur. The Centre said these projects would help local residents get pure drinking water 24 hours a day.

Kumar said women were happy that they would get clean drinking water. “But I want to request you to reconsider this from the perspective of the environment that should 24-hour supply be given? Will it lead to misuse? We are doing the Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal project which is 80% complete and will be completed by October, but we found during the project that the tap drinking water provided to people was also used by some for irrigation and bathing animals,” Kumar told the PM.