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.

He said he had to tell people not to use the water so much as it would lead to the depletion of groundwater levels. “Instead of 24-hour supply, water can be given for enough time so that it is used properly,” the CM said, admitting that he would be criticised in the media for such a suggestion.

Condemning Kumar for the statement, opposition RJD’s spokesperson, Nawal Kishore, said: “It is shocking that the CM does not have trust in the people of his own state while he wants them to elect him again. How can people misuse water? Ours is an agrarian-based economy which is dependent on water which is a basic requirement.”

The PM did not refer to Kumar’s suggestion during his speech while pointing out that 5.7 million houses had been given a water connection in the last few months in Bihar and 600,000 houses had got drinking water under the AMRUT scheme in the state. “Our aim is to cover 12 lakh houses in Bihar under the AMRUT scheme,” Modi said.

The PM took a swipe at the earlier Lalu Prasad regime, saying there was a phase when there was no focus on governance in the state and its villages had become more backward. The infrastructure in the cities was also not upgraded according to the growing population.

“Either the development works were not done or they became subject to scams,” Modi said. He said a large section in Bihar had accepted debt, disease, helplessness and illiteracy as their fate and lost self-esteem, enduring pain for decades when basic needs like water and sewerage were not met.

“For the past few years efforts are on to reverse the system and bring back the confidence to the most affected section of the society,” the PM said.