Mirzapur: The residents of Lahuria Dah village in Uttar Pradesh’s Mirzapur woke up to celebrations this week when the village received piped water supply for the first time, 76 years after Independence.
District Magistrate Divya Mittal turned on a tap installed at the end of a maze of pipes laid by the state government.
Till now, the hill village of 1,200 people was dependent on a nearby spring, which used to turn dry in the summers. Thereafter, paid tankers were the only means to fulfill the village’s water needs.
Mittal said, “It was tough to bring the water supply line to Lahuria Dah and this could be gauged by the fact that due to a lack of proper planning, the work was stopped half-way about a decade ago. The village was also not included in the Jal Jeevan Mission.”
The locals said, “Before Independence, very few families would live in the village with their animals and their requirements would be fulfilled by the spring. Later, they used to go to the plains to sell milk and come back with water in their containers. For the past 25-30 years, water started reaching through tankers and the entire budget of the village was spent on it.”
Besides, distribution of water from tankers used to be challenging as people would squabble to fetch water first. “After a previous project of over Rs 4.87 crore could not yield results and water supply did not reach the village, I met the district magistrate and she took note of the problem and started fresh efforts and the new project of over Rs 10 crore was sanctioned,” said a local resident.
The district magistrate sought help of geophysicists and other technical experts of Banaras Hindu University and formed a joint team of Jal Jeevan Mission, UP Jal Nigam, Namami Gange officials, and chief development officer to find out a suitable technology for taking water supply lines to the village located on the hard rocky surface.
After this, a separate proposal for this village was sent to the government, which got approval.
“The partially constructed basic infrastructure of the previous project and new methods finalised by this team were utilised to begin the water supply work in April this year and the project was completed in August,” she said.