Delhi waits for water after troops retake canal from protesters

Protests abate but it will take some days for water supply to normalise, Delhi chief minister says.

Residents crowd around a municipal water tanker in New Delhi on February 22, 2016. Anindito Mukherjee / Reuters

NEW DELHI // Indian troops on Monday regained control of a canal that supplies two-thirds of Delhi’s water needs, as residents of the capital faced a second day of shortage triggered by caste protests in neighbouring Haryana state.

Protesters from the Jat community cut off supplies from the Munak Canal to most of Delhi’s 18 million residents on Sunday after they damaged the sluice gates.

At least 19 people have died and 200 were injured during the protests, which began nine days ago and escalated over the weekend, with arson attacks and police firing.

The Jats were on Monday considering calling off the protests after the state government agreed they should be given quotas for government jobs and university places under India’s caste-based quota system. They claim their community has been impoverished and discriminated against because of their caste.

However, fresh violence between Jats and security forces broke out on Monday evening, prolonging the protests.

On Monday morning, Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that the army had wrested control of the canal from the protesters.

However, Delhi residents may not get immediate relief, Mr Kejriwal warned. Although 25 per cent of the disrupted water supply was expected to be restored by Monday evening, a return to normality will take longer.

“We have to prepare ourselves,” Mr Kejriwal said. “Even if water is released now, it will take 24 hours to reach Delhi as water treatment plants too have been closed. The water in the city is almost over.”

The protesters had set up blockades on Haryana’s highways and on Friday night they occupied a section of Munak Canal, which supplies 543 million gallons per day (MGD) of the 820 MGD of water that Delhi requires.

As a result, nearly 60 per cent of Delhi’s taps ran dry on Sunday and Monday in a crisis that the capital’s water minister called historic.

“We can only provide drinking water … The situation in Haryana is out of control,” Kapil Mishra said.

Schools were closed across the capital, and seven of its nine water treatment plants were shuttered. Municipal authorities tried to supply drinking water through a fleet of 726 tankers that visited colonies sprawled across the city.

“Want to imagine the extent of crisis?” Mr Mishra tweeted on Sunday. “Areas where we provide 580 MGD water every day, tomorrow they will be getting just 2.5 MGD through tankers.”

Mr Mishra also tweeted photos of the damage that protesters had caused to the canal, showing its concrete walls shattered in several places.

In Begumpur, a village nestled within a more upscale area in south Delhi, Meena Khatri has received no water since Saturday morning.

Even before the crisis, she received piped water for only 90 minutes each morning, during which she has to fill enough buckets and vessels to tide her over till the next day.

"Now we've gone two and a half days without bathing, and we're even being careful about how much water we drink," Ms Khatri told The National.

Ms Khatri, who cooks and cleans in three homes near Begumpur, had to leave for work on Monday morning. By the time she returned in the late afternoon, a tanker had come and gone but she was unable to get her buckets filled because no one was home.

“A neighbour remembered me and filled one of her pots for me,” she said. “Now we will have to make do with this and hope that the water supply resumes soon. Otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do.”

On Sunday, the federal government deployed army and paramilitary troops to quash the protests along the Munak Canal and clear roadblocks.

Simultaneously, both the federal and state governments yielded to the protesters’ demands, promising to move towards granting these quotas.

India reserves a number of government jobs and university places for Dalits, or “untouchables”, and for other so-called “backward castes”, under measures intended to remedy centuries of discrimination. But the policy causes resentment among other communities such as Jats, who say it puts them at a disadvantage.

“We have accepted the government offer and are in the process of consulting other Jat leaders to arrive at a consensus before deciding about calling off the agitation today,” Yashpal Malik, head of a group of Jat organisations, said on Monday. “We are demanding that the government should compensate the families of people who died [during] the agitation.”

On Sunday, India’s home minister Rajnath Singh said that while a federal government committee was preparing a comprehensive report on Jat reservation, “the Haryana government will introduce a bill in the state assembly to provide reservation for Jats in the [state government]”.

“I appeal to everyone to maintain peace,” Mr Singh said. “If someone indulges in violence, we will have to take action.”

The committee, headed by the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Venkaiah Naidu, was due to convene for the first time on Monday evening.

K K Rao, an inspector general in the Haryana police, said the situation in the state was peaceful. “The roads are open, and other minor blockades will be opened soon.”

* Additional reporting from Agence France-Presse