55% water connections in Karnal ‘unauthorised’

Parveen Arora

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Karnal, March 15

A large number of illegal water connections in Karnal city are causing a huge loss to the Municipal Corporation (MC). The MC does not have the accurate number of violators, but as per an official estimate, the number is 50,000. The authorities have now given a three-month deadline to the violators to get the water connections regularised after paying a one-time fee, else the civic body would disconnect these.

3-MONTH DEADLINE FOR REGULARISATION

I have asked the junior engineers to issue notices to violators, directing them to get their connections regularised within three months, or we will discontinue them. Abhishek Meena, MC

As per a civic body official, there are about 1.60 lakh property IDs in the city, of which nearly 70,000 are under the HSVP and over 90,000 under the MC. Of the 90,000, only 40,500 households have regularised water connections.

“We will provide a single-window system for the regularisation of connections,” said Municipal Commissioner Abhishek Meena.

To strengthen the water supply system in the city, work has been allotted to an agency to initiate smart water distribution based on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) under the Smart City project. Sensors will be installed on tubewells and along pipelines to measure and control the volume and pressure of water and check for leakages. This system would also help in ensuring the quality of water and detecting pipe bursts in the water supply network, making the system less manual.

“Electromagnetic flow meters, pressure meters, level sensors, an automaton for the chlorination of water, TDS meter and turbidity sensors will be installed on all 178 tubewells and at identified key points across the city to provide a full-proof water supply system,” added the Commissioner. He has told the authorities concerned to ensure that all three booster stations have boundary walls.