HC urge tanker owners to provide water for testing ESRs at modest prices

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

The Aurangabad Bench of Bombay High Court comprising Justice Ravindra Ghuge and Justice Y G Khobragade underlined that considering the future of the city the tanker-owners should cooperate with the administration concerned by providing water at modest prices for testing of three elevated storage reservoirs (ESRs).

The construction of four ESRs is completed, out of which, the testing of one ESR has been done and the testing of the remaining three is due. The contractor requires 1.06 crore litres of water for the testing of three ESRs.

The court ordered the contractor to provide the required quantity of water for testing an ESR, upload the water in the ESRs and then after testing again unload the water in tankers and upload the water for testing in other ESRs for testing. The contractor should bear all the expenses as per the agreement. The next hearing on the petition will be held on June 26.

Meeting Schedule

The court also instructed to conduct a joint meeting of the new water supply scheme contractor GVPR Company’s officials and the owners of the private tankers under the headship of the municipal commissioner or the additional commissioner at Smart City Office on June 15 (Thursday) at 4 pm. The meeting should decide on the arrangement of the water supply required for the testing, stated the court.

Valuable suggestion by HC

The contractor, out of constructing 10 ESR as per assurance, has completed four ESRs. The testing of these ESRs has to be done to find out whether there exist any leakages in them or not. Each ESR will need an average of 40 lakh litres of water for testing. Hence, for the testing of three ESRs, there is a need for 1.06 crore litres of water. Hence the court finds a way out to avoid waste of such a huge quantity of water. The court suggested conducting testing of ESRs on an alternate basis to save water. It will take seven days for the testing of one ESR. The court has fixed the time table for implementing the task.

It may be noted that the testing of ESR at Hanuman Tekadi has been completed. Hence the court has ordered to complete testing of ESR situated at T V Centre, Delhi Gate and Himayat Baugh (on an alternate basis) from June 20 to July 9.

Contractor’s assurance

The contractor assured the court that he will daily lay 100 metres of the main water pipeline between Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Paithan and also a 3 km long pipeline as a part of city's internal distribution.

Box

Bench rejected the application

Meanwhile, the divisional commissioner and the president of the High Court-appointed Committee for monitoring the new water supply scheme, Sunil Kendrekar, has applied for voluntary retirement. Hence the civil application requesting to reject his plea reviewing the progress of the ongoing water supply scheme works was submitted to the High Court at the end of the hearing.

However, the bench did not accept it. The court said that nobody can be made to change from his decision. However, the request can be made to him to look after the committee’s work as a citizen, said the court.