Nalanda faces power, water crises

biharsharif: with the onset of summer, the problem of power crisis is increasing day by day here, causing great hardship to the local people. the erratic power supply has also led to scarcity of drinking water. unfortunately, no sign of relief for the 2.25 lakh people of the town is in sight for the present. the national thermal power corporation had recently set up a grid station in the district at an estimated cost of rs 30 crore.the people of biharsharif and surrounding areas were hopeful that they would get regular power after the setting up of the grid station. but these hopes have been belied. at present, people of biharsharif get power for only four to five hours. due to erratic power supply, students, businessmen and the general public are hard hit. people are beginning to spend sleepless nights in the town. the power crisis has also badly affected drinking water supply in the town. this district headquarter town requires 90 lakh gallons of drinking water everyday. for this, 16 pumping stations were installed some 15 years back. out of the 16, four pumping stations -- at mirdad, lohgani no 2, laheri and shekhana -- are out of order for the last three years. the normal life of a pumping station is about 15 years which also depends on proper maintenance. moreover, whatever water supply is made by pumping stations, is "cornered" by affluent persons by using pumps. the poor and middle class people are thus left high and dry. there is no check on this practice either by the administration or the municipality. the phed, biharsharif, has a list of 315 handpumps, out of which 114 are out of order. in many of the remaining handpumps, water level has gone down and water cannot be pumped out. the executive engineer, phed, biharsharif division, said that for sinking of handpumps, funds are directly allotted to the municipality by the urban development department of the state government. he further said that a proposal for sinking 114 handpumps at an outlay of rs 47 lakh had been sent to the department, but the sanction has not yet been received. the plight of the rural population of nalanda district is not much better. it is claimed by phed that 9,000 handpumps have been installed in the rural area. but 75 per cent handpumps are either damaged or defunct. those villagers who get water from wells are relatively in a better position. to find out a solution to the drinking water problem, nalanda dm hukum singh meena convened a meeting of the executive engineer, phed and electricity and special officer, biharsharif municipality, recently. he sanctioned rs 35 lakh for installing three high-power tubewells. after the installation of these tubewells, an additional 40 to 45 lakh gallons of drinking water will be available for the biharsharif town. a cell has been constituted at the district level to keep a watch on supply of drinking water and electricity.