‘20 crore litre water ferried to Rajasthan's Pali district via trains since April’

JAIPUR: The North Western Railway (NWR) has provided 20 crore litre of water through trains to Pali district since April.
On Friday, a train from Jodhpur conducted its 100th trip to Pali carrying 20 lakh litres of water.
According to officials, initially, when the service was started in April, one trip per day was being made from Jodhpur which was later increased to three trips a day.
NWR chief public relations officer Captain Shashi Kiran said, “The operation of special water trains for Pali started in April and service will continue till the crisis is over. Due to the scarcity of water, the residents and industrial units faced a lot of problems. Due to extreme heatwave, temperatures crossed 45 degrees Celsius in April, aggravating the crisis.”
At present, two special water trains have been provided by the railways for distance of 70 kilometre from Jodhpur’s Bhagat ki Kothi to Pali, which is making an average of three trips per day, transporting 20 lakh litre of water in each trip.
For the operation, state government is giving Rs 3.24 lakh per trip to the railways.
As per records, the water requirement of Pali is around 40-45 million litre per day (MLD), while the city is receiving just 20-24 MLD of water.
Last week, residents had also protested and complained that they had been receiving water once in 10-12 days.
District officials had attributed the water crisis to lack of rainfall in the region.
Water crisis in Pali region has been reported earlier too, with the railways first starting special water trains for the region in 2005 from Jodhpur.
Since then, water train services have been provided to the district four times from Bhagat ki Kothi to Pali.