Bengaluru: Mahadevapura stares at a water crisis, tankers to go off roads from Monday

BENGALURU: A water crisis looms over Mahadevapura with over 400 water tankers catering to residents of the area likely to go off road from Monday as part of an indefinite strike.
Tanker operators are protesting a diktat from the Hoskote tahildar barring them from drawing water from borewells in Anagondanahalli and Muthsandra in Hoskote taluk, in view of the plummeting ground water level in the region.The tahsidlar has cut off power supplly to borewells from where water is being drawn for commercial purposes.
Jagdish Reddy, a resident of Mahadevapura, said, “Due to concretisation and inefficient ways of the BWSSB, we are in a situation where we have to buy a tanker of water once every three days. They should aggressively pursue rain water harvesting to improve ground water levels. We have dig up to 1800 to 2000 feet to strike water but even that is contaminated with heavy metals.”
HA Nagaraj Rao, president of Bangalore Apartments Federation, said, “Many apartments in the Mahadevapura area are forced to depend on private water tankers for their essential needs since the government supply hasn’t been provided. Many of those areas don’t have BWSSB lines or where present supply is erratic and insufficient. At our meeting with the tanker suppliers association, we were informed that their power supply has been cut off by an order of the tahsildar.”
Jay Chandra, ,a resident of an apartment in Panathur, said, “In the past three days we have had a limited water supply or no water supply at all. We pay Rs 1300 for 12000 litres of water. From tomorrow we’ll have to pay double the cost and get water from elsewhere. Our water suppliers are demanding Rs 2500 to get the same amount of water from some other place. With the summer fast approaching we will be facing a lot of issues.”
“There is no way our operations are causing any water scarcity in Hoskote taluk. They have enough water during peak summer. It is Mahadevapura which is desperately in need of water,” a representative of the water tanker operators said.