In a mockery of sorts, Orange City Water (OCW) had to restore the disconnected illegal water connections as they were held at proverbial ‘gun point’ and prevented from carrying out their official work. Political pressure to continue with the arrangement of illegal tapping ensured that agency could not start the metered supply of drinking water in Barasingal’s Borkar Nagar area. The locality comes under Fort-2 command area of Gandhibagh Zone and since long, the residents here have been drawing water through illegal household connections. Trying to correct the imbalance against backdrop of pressure by ruling party brass to improve the water distribution in city and cut non-revenue water (NRW) ratio, OCW undertook drive to weed out illegal connections.

 

On September 12, the communiqué from OCW said its team disconnected the illegal connections in Borkar Nagar. Simultaneously, work to charge the metered pipeline connections by carrying out interconnection works was started. But some people from the Sweeper Colony abused and threatened OCW officials and contractual workers and forced them to stop the work. The workers and staff were held hostage and released only upon the intervention of the local police. Consequently that day, the entire area was left without drinking water supply. More dangerously, the open pits that were dug up for inter-connection of pipelines remained open. The next day, post discussions with NMC officials and upon assurances from certain local representatives and ex-corporator, OCW team once again attempted to complete the pending interconnection works.

 

The aim was to restore water supply through legal metered connections. However, on second day also, the residents put up resistance and would not let OCW staff to charge the meter. Even presence of local police failed to prevent OCW from completing its official work, which is quite shocking. The local were seemingly undeterred by presence of law enforcement agencies, who abjectly watched the locals continue to hamper Government work. The group of people from Sweeper Colony openly threatened the OCW team even as police personnel and even local politicians watched the drama unfold. The local politicians sided with locals and put pressure on OCW to stop insisting on metered water supply. They directed OCW team to reconnect the illegal connected connections.

 

Left with little room for manoeuvre and in view of threats, OCW said its staff abandoned the move to charge water pipeline through the meters. Till the time of filing this report, the reconnection of old illegal supply lines was in progress, carried out under duress in the presence of police and local influences, making it impossible for OCW to resume water supply through the intended legal metered pipeline.