‘Your minister’s hasty missive is an admission of failure’: Delhi LG slams AAP over water woes; Atishi responds

Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena, in a scathing letter to jailed Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of using the death of a woman for political gains. The crux of the letter was the mismanagement at the Delhi Jal Board that resulted in the said water woes in the city. AAP leader and Water Minister Atishi responded to Saxena and said that his letter might have been intended for optics but one cannot refute the fact that water woes in Delhi have been artificially created. 

In the letter to Kejriwal, LG Saxena said that the water minister using the death of a woman in a fight over fetching water was for “narrow political goals” and that the government has created a “chimera of free water”. His letter comes two days after Atishi had written to the LG, asking him to suspend the CEO of Delhi Jal Board after the woman’s death in Farsh Bazar. 

“I was deeply distressed at the insensitive communication from the Minister for Water… Atishi on Sunday. While I was yet to receive the letter, it characteristically found its way on various social and mainstream media platforms, the moment it was signed.  She has chosen to use the unfortunate death of a woman in East Delhi for narrow and partisan political goals,” he said in his letter, adding that the water minister indicted her own government of 9 years by underscoring the inadequacy of water supply. The LG said that the woman’s death was not the only of such cases, and that many such incidents have happened in the past due to the failure of the government.

“Such instances have become a recurrent phenomenon year after year and have been widely reported in media over the last 10 years… Water woes in the capital, especially in settlements where the poor live, have exacerbated over the last decade…Your minister’s hasty missive to me is an admission of these failures and defaults of performance of your government and amount to facile attempts at shrugging responsibility off, a complex problem,” he added.

Saxena, quoting the Economic Survey 2023-24, tabled in the recent Budget Session of the Delhi Assembly, said that water treatment capacity only grew marginally from 906 MGD to 946 MGD in the last decade. This is growth of 4.4 per cent, while the population of the city grew 15 per cent. There is an overall shortfall of 290 MGD of water supply in Delhi, he said.

Of the 2.5 crore people in Delhi, over 2 crore are deprived of drinking water supply in varying degrees, especially in unauthorised colonies, slum clusters and to a lesser extent, even in organized developed colonies, said Saxena. “It simply points to the fact that there has been no effort whatsoever during the last 10 years for plugging the leaks and we seem to be spending thousands of crores in pumping water into a leaking bucket,” the L-G said.

The LG said that the finance department has released Rs 28,400 crore to DJB since 2015. The accumulated loan and interest liability of DJB stands at Rs 73,000 crore, he said. “Instead of fixing the iniquitous water supply, you and your ministers created a chimera of free water,” he said.

Atishi hit back at the LG and said that suspending the DJB CEO, which she had urged for in her letter, would have averted the crisis Delhi faces this summer. Delhi ministers have been seeking Saxena’s intervention in matters “elementary governance functions have been brought to a standstill due to acts and omissions of the officers of the GNCTD” but the LG managed a “stoic silence and complete apathy towards the water woes of people of Delhi”, said Atishi. 

“But when the actual culprit of this criminal negligence and misfeasance was brought before you, you decided to speak in his defence which the whole of Delhi knows is legally and morally indefensible,” she said.

Arguing that there is a “disconnect between responsibility and authority” in the current administration, Atishi said that the LG’s letter may be intended for optics but it cannot be denied that the water crisis has been artificially created. Atishi also claimed a conspiracy to stop the release of funds to the DJB.