Munak Canal not ready to draw water from Haryana

For the past four years, Delhi has been continuously blaming the Haryana government for not providing raw water to commission its 40 mgd treatment plant planned to end an 11-year-old water crisis in Dwarka sub-city. But the reality is very shocking. The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) is not in a position to bring water to the plant as its flagship project — Munak Canal is still incomplete. In a recent stricture of the Delhi High Court coupled with consistent pressure from Central government to commission the plant, the babus of Delhi admitted that the 22.5 km underground pipeline to bring water to Dwarka WTP still has three incomplete stretches.

“The concerned agencies are yet to start the first stage- land acquisition. We have recently written a letter to deputy commissioner (revenue) and land & building department (L&D) of Delhi government to acquire the land for the project,” said Balvinder Kumar, Vice Chairman of DDA. 

In the letter written to DJB, besides these two departments on December 17, DDA has mentioned three incomplete stretches of the underground pipeline planned from Haiderpur to Dwarka on the right side of 220 KV electricity high tension line. These stretches are 400 meter in Madanpur Dabas village, 80 meter in Masudabad village and around 300 meters in Dahiya Farm. The first stretch has 78 houses of Bhagya Vihar colony, an unauthorised colony set up in early nineties, second stretch has 16 houses and the third has 21 trees in its way. “We have also written to the forest department to grant us permission to cut the trees,” added Kumar. Besides, DDA has also written to Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) to provide guidelines to rehabilitate dwellers of these 96 houses. “All these plots and houses have been constructed by land mafia and sold to migrant people illegally. They assure the buyers that if they are displaced in future they must get government flats,” said Ravinder Dabas, a local showing under-construction houses on underground pipelines. 

In a visit to the ground zero, Millennium Post found that the construction was on in the 100 meter wide stretch right above the already laid underground pipelines endangering their safety in Bhagya Vihar unauthorised colony and other areas. The construction of the three water treatment plants in Delhi — Dwarka (40 mgd), Okhla (20 mgd) and Bawana (20 mgd), were started in 2003 and completed in 2011. These plants were constructed to treat 80 mgd of additional water estimated to receive in Delhi ‘saved from enroute seepage loss’ after construction of 102 km long cemented Munak Canal from Munak in Haryana to Haiderpur in Delhi. So far, Rs 474 crore has been paid to Haryana to construct the cemented portion of the canal for which the MoU was signed in 1993. The Munak Canal was estimated to fulfill water requirements of over 40 lakh people residing in Dwarka, Sangam Vihar, South and South West Delhi, West Delhi and North West Delhi areas.