A day after a group of Trinamool councillors staged a protest in front of Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya’s office, civic officials on Tuesday claimed that the acute water crisis faced by south Kolkata is nothing new. The situation, they say, can improve if political parties bury their differences.

Engineers of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said the water crisis cannot be resolved until the Rs 315-crore Dhapa Water Treatment Plant — work for which is yet to start — and the Rs 36-crore water treatment plant, that is under construction, start functioning.

“The scarcity of surface water in the area is an old issue. To supply adequate surface water to those areas we have taken up two projects. One is the water treatment plant coming up at Dhapa and another is the 15-million gallon water treatment plant in Garden Reach. Once these plants get functional things can be normal,” said a senior official of the KMC.

He also said the situation could improve if there was a political will. “We are constructing two water pumping stations in Daspara and Siriti in Behala. The one being constructed at Siriti is yet to be completed and will take some more time. The station at Daspara will be completed in a month. But to start the pumping station, we have to lay around 5.5-km pipeline for connecting the station to the booster pumping station,” he said.

Pleading anonymity, the official added that the ruling party and the Opposition are yet to reach a consensus on the issue. As a result the work is yet to be executed.

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