NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Assembly polls, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday announced another populist scheme of bringing down charges for getting new water connection to a single, flat amount of Rs 2,310 irrespective of the size of plot.
At the same time, Kejriwal hit out at Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan for ‘trying to gain political mileage’ in the ongoing fight over water quality in Delhi.
Infrastructure and development charge for water connections was waived off, which, according to the Delhi government, will bring relief and to the people and motivate people to pay for legal water supply.
“It was observed that many residents across different areas do not have legal water connections in their houses. Despite water pipelines in their areas, lakhs of households have not installed water or sewer connections because of high installation, infrastructure and development charges. Hence, the DJB has decided to bring down the total rate charged for these to Rs 2,310,” said Kejriwal.
Earlier, a consumer with a plot of 200 sq m had to shell out nearly Rs 1.14 lakh for new water and sewer connections. For a 300 sq m plot, an applicant had to pay nearly Rs 1.24 lakh.
Government notifications in this regard will be issued within a week. The CM listed achievements of his government in the past four and half years to better the water supply and quality. Only 58% of Delhi had water pipelines installed at the time of the AAP government formation, he said, adding now around 93% of Delhi has water pipelines.
“When our government was formed in 2015, there were more than 2,300 areas in Delhi where water quality was bad. Today, complaints of bad water quality are received from less than 125 areas in Delhi which proves that we are trying our best to solve this issue and not to do politics over it. I am saying, if there is a water problem in an area, we will fix it.”
Kejriwal asserted that he was not interested in doing politics over the issue in an apparent reference to the BJP and the LJP which held protests.