Water shortage sparks protest in Mussoorie

Mussoorie: Residents of Mussoorie on Tuesday staged a protest outside the Jal Sansthan office over water shortages, alleging that the Yamuna-Mussoorie drinking water project has failed to meet the hill town’s needs even as the peak tourist season has begun.

“The drinking water project was supposed to meet the town’s water requirement till 2054, but water supply these days is even lower than usual,” said Sanjay Aggarwal, president of the Mussoorie Hotels Association. The association has written to the chief minister seeking intervention.

The project was launched in Jan 2020 at a cost of Rs 144 crore to meet the town’s drinking water needs by pumping water from the Yamuna. Water supply under the project began in June 2023.

Bharat Singh Chauhan, a resident of Landour, said, “The area has been facing an acute water shortage for the past few days.”

“Several localities, including Mullingar, Landour Cantonment, Masonic Lodge, Hussain Gunj, Barlowganj, Kulri and Zafar Hall, are facing this issue,” said Rajat Aggarwal, president of the traders’ association, who participated in the protest.

Residents warned that they would intensify their agitation if the situation does not improve. “If the water crisis is not resolved within three days, we will launch a larger protest,” Aggarwal added.

Amit Kumar, executive engineer of Jal Sansthan, attributed the disruption to power outages caused by a recent storm. “Power disruptions affected water supply, but the outages have now stopped and we have not received any complaints of shortage from any locality,” he said.

Satender Pal Singh, executive engineer of Peyjal Nigam, the agency responsible for pumping water from the Yamuna, told TOI, “Water pumping was affected between May 28-30, but we are now supplying 7 to 8 million litres of water per day to the town.”