VARANASI: Residents of Lahuria Dah village, nestled in scenic Mirzapur hills, received piped water supply for the first time, 76 years after Independence on Tuesday evening.
District magistrate Divya Mittal turned on a tap installed at the end of a maze of pipes laid by the state government.Lahuria Dah comes under the limits of Devhar village panchayat.
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 fulfil the village's water needs.
"We have been spending our entire annual budget on water," said village pradhan Kaushalendra Gupta."How tough was the task to bring the water supply line to Lahuria Dah could be gauged by the fact that due to lack of proper planning, the work was stopped half-way about a decade ago.
The village was also not included in Jal Jeevan Mission," said Mittal, jubilant over the success of the efforts made to saturate the village with tap water supply.Happy to see water reaching their village through tap elderly locals like Harilal Dharkar and Jivanlal Yadav recalled, “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.” Gupta said, “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 DM with a request to look into the matter.
She took note of the problem and started fresh efforts and the new project of over Rs 10 crore was sanctioned,” Gupta said.
“I was informed that despite all previous efforts, taking a water supply line to this village had proved impossible and the funds allocated to the village for other development projects were being spent on arranging water tankers,” the DM told TOI.
“After going through the difficulties faced during previous efforts, I 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 hard rocky surface.
After this, a separate proposal for this village was sent to the government, which got approval,” Mittal added.
“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 before the end of August, the mission was accomplished,” said Mittal, who had reached Lahuria Dah on Tuesday late afternoon to take part in religious rituals and a function to mark the beginning of tap water supply in the village.
Lahuria Dah, 49 km from Mirzapur district headquarters at Madhya Pradesh border, houses a composite population of Kole, Dharkar, Yadav, Pal and Kesharwani communities.
Mittal said, “Apart from beginning the tap water supply line, the only well of the village has been utilised for rainwater harvesting while an artificial dam-cum-pond has also been created for the collection of water for animals as they can’t always be fed tap water.” “The lift pumps of the project sending water to the hill top village will be managed under Jal Jeevan Mission,” she added
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