By IANS,
Bhopal : The Congress’s Madhya Pradesh unit will stage demonstrations at every district headquarters in the state Saturday against the alleged laxity of the government in tackling the ongoing water crisis.
Congress’s state unit president Suresh Pachouri Friday charged the state government with not taking adequate measures despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s warning in 2006 about the impending water crisis in the state.
Pachouri, in a statement, said that the prime minister had written to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Aug 14, 2006 cautioning him on impending water crisis. A copy of a model bill was also attached with the letter.
Later, the then Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz also spoke to the then state Planning Board vice-chairman Sompal Shastri to make concerted efforts through the public health engineering (PHE) and other departments for tackling water crisis but to no avail, he said, alleging that millions of rupees received from the centre and huge allocation in the state’s budget for water supply schemes were wasted due to “administrative corruption”.
As many as 341 towns and 15,000 villages in the state are reeling under severe water crisis. Massive migration was reported from the drought hit northern parts of the state, Pachauri said, adding that more than 24,000 hand pumps have gone dry. As many as 1,200 Jal-Nal schemes were closed of which 222 were closed due to snapping of power connections.