Residents queue up to purchase drinking water amid water crisis in Siliguri on Thursday.
Protests have erupted in West Bengal’s Siliguri town in the wake of an unprecedented scarcity of drinking water, with the civic body announcing that the water supplied is unfit for drinking. Gautam Deb, Mayor of the Trinamool-run Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC), had on Wednesday announced that as the Irrigation Department was carrying maintenance work at the Teesta canal, the civic body is drawing water from Mahananda river to its treatment plant in Fulbari. This water is high in BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) and harmful for regular consumption, he said.
“Maintenance work by the State irrigation department on the Teesta river bank will continue till June 1. I request everyone to not drink the water that is being supplied by the Municipal Corporation till June 2. It can, however, be used for other purposes. Until then, the municipal corporation will distribute water pouches for drinking purposes through the boroughs,” Mr. Deb said.
Siliguri, located in the Darjeeling district near the State’s northern border at the foothills of the Himalayas, is one of the most-populated cities in West Bengal.
Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Darjeeling wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist (SUCI-C) carried out separate protest marches and sit-in demonstrations on Thursday and Friday, demanding the resignation of the Mayor and accusing the civic body of supplying contaminated water to residents.
“The Honourable Mayor of Siliguri Municipal Corporation made the people of Siliguri drink contaminated water for the last 20 days because of his inefficiency,” local BJP leader Shankar Ghosh posted on X.
CPI(M) leader and former Siliguri Mayor Asok Bhattacharya demanded an explanation as to why the civic body had initially assured residents that water being drawn from the Mahananda river is safe for drinking, adding that this “betrayal” should be dealt with sternly. “Supplying contaminated water to people is a crime that warrants punishment,” he said.
To mitigate the crisis, the civic body has been distributing 1 lakh water pouches in the town every day. As of Friday, the number of water pouches being distributed was increased to 2 lakh a day.
Many residents have claimed that long queues for the water pouches have made it difficult to procure drinking water from kiosks and tankers. They also alleged that many shops and private suppliers in Siliguri have hiked prices of packaged drinking water and water containers in the wake of this crisis.
According to councillor Dulal Dutta, the city draws around 100 million litres of water from the municipal corporation on a daily basis. “We have so far managed to meet the demand by distributing water pouches,” Mr. Dutta said.
