Watch: Villagers in Baghpat bash Yogi govt for failure to provide drinking water for 5 years now

“We haven’t had safe drinking water in the last five years. The water is so contaminated that there have been at least 100 deaths due to liver cancer and other water-borne diseases in the last five years. The authorities have failed to provide us with alternate sources of drinking water, despite numerous deaths and repeated requests from the villagers,” complains Dharmendra Rathi, the Pradhan of Gangnauli village in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district.

Gangnauli village, just under 100 kms from the National Capital, is among 154 villages in the region, comprising districts Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Baghpart, Meerut, Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar. Lying on the banks of a critically polluted Hindon river (comprising its tributaries Kali and Krishna rivers), the villagers in Gangnauli are forced to quench their thirst from the contaminated river, as alternate sources of water are scarce.

“The government has cheated us. They can’t even provide us with drinking water. They have lied to us,” says Ranvijay Singh Pawar, from Baghpat’s Mozizabad Nangal.

The problems faced by the predominantly farming communities in even accessing safe, drinking water living along the river’s banks are an embarrassment for both the state as well as the central government, both helmed by the BJP.

Also read: NGT slams Yogi govt for failure to provide safe water in 154 villages in western UP; demands Rs 5 crore bond

The villagers are also among more than 15 crore persons worldwide who are dependent on untreated surface water from lakes, rivers, ponds and streams, as per a latest global estimate by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The WHO figures highlight that close to 85 crore people in the world lack even a basic drinking-water service.

An ongoing case in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) by an environmental group Doaba Paryavaran Samiti has highlighted the lackadaisical approach of the state government in not only supplying clean drinking water, but also the failure of the authorities in providing compensation and medical help to those diagnosed by the deadly water-borne diseases.

A four-judge NGT bench had noted last week 71 persons had died of cancer and more than 47 had been rendered bed-ridden over the last two years in Gangnauli village in Baghpat district alone.

Moreover, an expert committee under a former Allahabad High Court judge, Justice SU Khan, blamed the government of Yogi Adityanath for “non-cooperation” in letting the panel identify the victims of water-borne diseases.

Questions are bound to be raised on the government’s commitment to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which stipulate that people anywhere in the world must have access to clean drinking water by 2030, with PM Modi awarded with UN’s top environmental honour “Champions of the Earth” in September last year.