Residents irked by diversion of water

One of the apartment buildings to which water is diverted

By Ankita Lath

BANGALORE (Nov. 28)—With its actual share of alternate-day water supply much less than its official quota, the 22-year-old LIC Colony in Jeevan Beema Nagar has been facing water diversion and water mismanagement problems.

The 600 houses in this area near Indira Nagar are supposed to receive 2.5 million liters of water every alternate day, but they lose a lot of that water as the pipes serving them are old and rusty.

Moreover, there are many new apartment buildings coming up around this area that get water on a daily basis.

Water consultant and colony resident S.S. Ranganathan said the residents of the colony inquired into the issue and found that part of water that should be coming into their colony is being diverted to the apartment buildings.

When they looked into how this was happening, they found that the valve operator, with some help from some officials from the Bangalore Water Supply & Sewage Board, had laid pipelines from the area’s main water station to these apartment buildings.

Ramachandrappa, the valve operator, has been working at the same post for over three decades, which in itself a violation of a BWSSB a rule that clearly states that no valve-man can work at one place for more than three years.

Apartment buildings on the Thippasandra Road confirmed to the Residents Forum of LIC Colony that associations from these apartments pay Ramachandrappa Rs. 1,000 a day to keep their water supply going.

“The valve man owns around eight houses in this area and SUV cars,” Ranganathan said. He said that the man comes on a bike to do his work so no one suspects him and has no idea that the residents are already suspicious of him.

1: The BWSSB cell that supplies water to Indira Nagar 2: Indira Nagar

Ranganathan said Residents Forum members were only able to meet the BWSSB chairman after many attempts, but this turned out to be futile as the chairman only said he would “look into the matter” and barely gave them five minutes of his time.

The next day, the chief engineer visited their area but found nothing wrong with the water supply in the colony, which just happened to be running normally that day.

Information provided by M.S. Anand, president of residents forum clearly states that the chief engineer gave instructions to install water flow meters to the junior engineer, but there has nothing been done about it.

The residents forum asked for a thorough inspection of the water pumping station, replacement and rectification of the faulty water supply valves which also fell on deaf ears and no action has been taken yet