The water crisis in Bengaluru has now hit the Lok Sabha elections too with residents of a layout in J.P. Nagar deciding to boycott the polls, owing to the apathy by the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) in providing the Cauvery water supply.
Over a hundred residents from Royal Lakefront Residency have signed a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer in which they have said that elections will be boycotted. The residents claim that they have been working with the BWSSB for 20 years now to get the Cauvery water supply, but it has not yielded results.
“We have underground drainage (UGD) facility and community water supply through borewells in the locality. Our tragedy is that these borewells have gone dry. We have no water supply at all,” said Nagesh. R., president, Royal Lakefront Residency Residents and Site Owners’ Welfare Association, in the letter.
He added: “We are helplessly obliged to depend on unreliable private water tankers paying very heavy charges as the borewells have dried up.”
Residents said that they were recently asked by the BWSSB to pay ₹1,30,75,550 for Phase 1 and ₹1,04,19,627 for Phase 2 for the Cauvery water connection. They alleged that the BWSSB was providing water to many revenue and B-khata layouts without such infrastructure charges, but only connection charges to individual houses.
The residents said that while there were two BWSSB storage tanks within one kilometre of the layout, a new one is also coming up soon. However, they said that instead of supplying water to residents of the layout, it is going to other distant places. They have urged the BWSSB to provide them with water supply from these tanks.
The residents have said that if their grievances are not met, then they will also boycott any subsequent elections.
