Delhi Dealing With A Drought Of Its Own, City's Ponds And Marshes May Soon Be History

At a time when the national capital is unable to quench its thirst, the water bodies here might soon be a part of history. Courtesy the government¡¯s inability to maintain or protect its existing water bodies. Information provided by different government agencies under the Right to Information Act (RTI) reveals that a sizeable number of Delhi¡¯s ponds, lakes and marshes have either completely disappeared or have been encroached upon.

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It¡¯s not that the government is unaware of this. A total of 971 water bodies are registered in the state records, say the documents accessed by Afroz Alam Sahil under the RTI, while 40 more have not been traced so far.

Illegal encroachment is killing Delhi's ponds

However, of the total, 168 water bodies have been encroached upon and illegal constructions have taken place on 39 of them.

For instance, a cremation ground came up in Joharpuri encroaching two water bodies in the area. Similarly, there is now a graveyard and an Eidgah at the place where a pond used to exit in Mustafabad. The same happened in Babarpur where a small pond was replaced by a cremation ground.

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70 percent of the water bodies have dried, according to the RTI, in Fatehpur Beri village where a temple has been built encroaching upon 40% of the area. A water body spread over 78 bigha of land in Chhattarpur has been issued to a temple, while another one in the same area was taken over by a Jain temple.

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In Karawal Nagar too, two water bodies have been encroached upon, one by a private party and the other has been leased out for 99 years to the Delhi Transport Corporation to build a bus terminal. In Gokulpur, the water body has been encroached over by 22 households. All these households are part of an unauthorised colony which is in process of being regularised.

Interestingly, the government is also the culprit here. Illegal constructions have taken place on 78 water bodies by the state government.

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In Kalkaji tehsil¡¯s Johar Tughlakabad village, a water body, according to the RTI reply, have been encroached upon by the DDA. One such example is Bankner village in the city where a stadium has come up on a dried up pond. The situation is worse in Sultanpur, where five water bodies have dried out completely and have been allotted to a government school.

In total, out of the total 1,011 water bodies, 285 have disappeared off the map while 338 have dried up completely.

Saving what's left

After the National Green Tribunal expressed concern over the depletion of the water table in the city and ordered the Delhi government to restore and clean all natural water bodies in the national capital in three weeks, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday constituted a high-level committee to look into the matter.

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Water Minister Kapil Mishra and Environment & Forests Minister Imran Hussain will be members of the committee. The CEO of Delhi Jal Board, Keshav Chandra will be its Member Secretary. The committee, according to reports, will look into issues related to taking necessary steps like site inspections, proper identification/confirmation of water bodies for updated inventory, suggesting suitable recommendations to restore them, rain water harvesting for the benefit of water bodies along with their development and beautification plan on targeted basis for all the water bodies-owning agencies.

The government is also trying to use satellite imaging to map its water bodies.

Every single day, Delhi uses over 300 crore litres of water to quench its thirst, but still falls short by about 100 crore litres. The issue of water shortage in and around the city has increased drastically over the years because of decreasing water level here.