BENGALURU: With areas in the city’s famed IT corridor of KR Pura, Horamavu, Whitefield, Varthur, Bellandur, Marathahalli, and Hoodi facing an acute shortage of water this summer, residents and activists allege that the crisis has gone up multifold due to the failure of civic agencies in curbing illegal layouts and borewells failing under the Mahadevapura Zone.
According to Sandeep Anirudhan, convenor, Citizens’ Agenda for Bengaluru, fly-by-night builders and real estate mafia from out of the state are mostly responsible for the crumbling infrastructure in the zone and also for the borewells going dry. He alleged that despite repeated complaints about illegal buildings, layouts, and borewells, none of the civic agencies acted resulting in water shortage in the zone.
Anirudhan says that houses and apartment complexes in Whitefield that have Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) connections get water once a fortnight or a month, which is not sufficient. “Individual borewells have also gone dry due to over-exploitation and groundwater theft by commercial buildings.
Even public borewells in CMC areas have dried up due to groundwater theft by commercial buildings. Tankers have become the only source of water, and they too are unable to meet the demand as their borewells too have gone dry,” Anirudhan added. He says this forces the private tankers to travel to rural areas to procure water, and this has forced them to hike tanker charges making it unaffordable for many.
He said illegal buildings are still being constructed mostly by out-of-state builders, and illegal borewells are still being sunk. And borewell water, although banned for construction use, is being blatantly abused by builders, while the masses suffer without drinking water, added Anirudhan.
“To summarise, the water crisis in the area is an outcome of unplanned development — illegal layouts, illegal buildings, and groundwater abuse, all originating in the greed of the ‘fly-by-night’ real estate mafia from neighbouring states… construct illegal buildings, commit violations, sell them off and flee, leaving the city to deal with the consequences of their actions,” opined Anirudhan.
While the illegal layouts and rampant drilling of borewells are blamed for groundwater depletion, Kochu Shankar, a resident of Ramamurthynagar Residents’ Welfare Association, held BWSSB accountable as since 2019, there has been no water flowing from their taps. “We were promised water under the Cauvery Stage V project. The board even collected betterment charges from residents at Horamavu and Ramamurthynagar promising water. But every time they skip the deadline to commission Caubery Stage V,” rued Shankar.
Reacting to the water crisis, BWSSB Chief Engineer, Bengaluru East, Kumar Naik said that BWSSB has already announced uninterrupted water as there is enough water in dams till July. On water tankers, he said the State Government has already acted and has fixed a cap on water tanker prices.