Vasundhara Enclave and MV I had to manage with stored water this morning

Residents of Vasundhara Enclave and Mayur Vihar Phase I woke up to a waterless morning today. Though the situation was somewhat pre-empted after the rupture of a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) pipeline at Laxmi Nagar, people were unhappy with DJB’s crisis management strategy.

Earlier this week, DJB had issued an advisory and assured uninterrupted water supply through its tankers to all the affected areas. However, it did not deliver on its promise, causing inconvenience to officegoers in Vasundhara Enclave’s group housing societies, who complained that they had to manage with stored water.

A section of residents, however, felt that a situation of scarce water supply could be managed for a short while. In the words of Vipin Rawat, a resident of Delux Apartments in Vasundhara Enclave, “One water tanker reached our society by 10.30 am. However, I feel people can buy drinking water from the market for a couple of days. And for other purposes, our society has the provision of tubewell water. So there is not much inconvenience.”

Most residents from the Vasundhara Enclave housing societies were of the view that though DJB’s water tankers supplied drinking water on Wednesday morning, these tankers had arrived a little late. “Almost every housing society has borewells and hence the water shortage is not felt much. However, situations such as these do become a problem for people who do not have alternatives to water supply,” said Anil Pandey, president of the Vasundhara Enclave CGHS federation.

According to DJB, the disruption was caused by repair work on leaking water pipelines in a couple of places. Officials have also alerted residents that the water crisis may continue until Thursday morning, primarily because the main water plant at Greater Kailash, which supplies water to East Delhi through South Delhi’s Sarai Kale Khan, is now closed for repair work. Water shortage in many of South Delhi’s residential colonies can also be attributed to this.