The analysis said the quality of water of the rivers like the Yamuna in Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh, the Ganga in Kanpur, the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad and the Satluj in Punjab was not fit for human consumption.

Coming only a few days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the Ganga as India's national river, the watchdog blamed India's urban centres for pollution. It said municipal corporations were not able to treat the increasing load of the sewage flowing into rivers.

In Delhi, more than half the city's sewage flows into the Yamuna without adequate treatment, turning the Yamuna into the country's most bacteria contaminated river. Urban sewage is also a major cause of the pol lution of the Sabarmati and the Hindon near Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh.

A Planning Commission re port on wastewater manage ment said only 30 per cent of the wastewater released into Indian rivers and lakes was treated.

The CPCB said organic pollu tion indicators, the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and the chemical oxygen demand (COD), were found to be considerably high near large urban centres due to the discharge of partly treated or untreated wastewater.

However, the CPCB found that the overall water quality had slightly improved during the last decade, but the pathogenic (bacterial) pollution level was still rising. Pathogen ic pollution is the major cause for water-borne diseases, which kill more than four lakh chil dren every year in India.

In 66 per cent of the monitor ing centres, the total coliform -- a bacterial pollution indica tor -- increased from 53 per cent in 2006 from as low as 48 per cent in 1999.

It is a well-known fact that the national capital's untreated sewage enters the Yamuna at 19 points as it flows downstream.

Speaking to The Times of India in Faridabad, state principal secretary (irrigation) RN Parashar said Haryana's repeated requests to the Delhi government to treat the whole quantity of water supplied had so far not yielded any results as the latter had pleaded its inability to expand the plant for want of space.

In response, Haryana government had offered land within its own territory that shares Delhi border on the condition that its neighbouring state government should bear the cost of construction and maintenance of the water treatment plant. Delhi has so far not responded to this suggestion. Further, it also owes a sum of Rs 85 crore to Haryana as cost of the water supplied.

Non-treatment of the whole water supplied has resulted in another serious problem for Haryana. Parashar alleged , "The remaining 750 million gallons unutilized water became part of the sullied water downstream draining into two canals, branching from Okhla, and flowing towards Faridabad and Gurgaon, thus depriving them the use of these foul-smelling canals' water.

The principal secretary disclosed, "Such a state of total indifference could not be allowed to last long and Delhi government must respond to our government's humanitarian gesture of supplying water for which we were not bound by law or constitution." He did not even rule out the possibility of restricting the water supply to 250 million gallons per day. Hence, an early decision by its Delhi counterparts is the need of the hour.

Sources in the board said Chief Executive Officer Ramesh Negi has agreed to write to the authority criticising the new guidelines on the grounds that they would lead to overexploitation of groundwater and result in a severe crunch. "The CEO said they (the new guidelines) would adversely affect the DJB's water supply too in the long run. So, he would press for making the rules more stringent," said a senior official.

An estimated 18 per cent of the board's supply is from groundwater. If extraction of groundwater becomes a free-forall, then the community borewells, too, would dry up, leading to critical scarcity.

On Friday, the board's brass had a meeting with leading experts to discuss the water sce- nario in the Capital. Officials revealed in the meeting that they had been opposing the guidelines even when the authority was in the process of forming them. "We will ask the CGWA to do a rethink on the this," the official said.

Meanwhile, environmental- ists, experts and residents' forums are up m arms against this order. "It is an incorrect decision that goes against all directives. It will harm the water resources of an area that has already been declared critical," said Manu Bhat- nagar of Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).

FORCE, an NGO, which has taken up the cause along with South Delhi residents would mobilise support from residents in Gurgaon as well for the protest because Gurgaon has been bearing the effects of over exploitation of groundwater for years. "NGOs will prepare a petition and demand a rollback of the order," said Jyoti Sharma, its president.

Residents of Vasant Vihar and Satya Niketan said they would together move the courts if the matter is not resolved in time.

Residents of Vasant Vihar realised this the hard way - for several months, they have been getting little or no water Harish Doraiswamy has been noting down the water supply schedule for the past two months.

"On August 1, I didn't get any water On August 2, I got running water for 10 minutes. On August 3, there was water for a record 130 minutes.

Then, for the next five days, there was no water Now you tell me, how does one plan his or her day?" he says.

Actor Sharmila Tagore says she has not been getting water for the past four months. "I am sur- vivmg on water tankers," she said.

Questioned former Delhi chief secretary Shailaja Chandran: "How do hotels, guesthouses and commercial establishments get constant supply of water, while the average home is deprived?" Vasant Vihar Resident Welfare Association president Romesh Chopra said many house- holds had not received any supply for 180 to 300 days.

"The Delhi Jal Board has grossly un- derestimated our water requirement. For the last six months, we have not been getting even this," he said. "During crisis, DJB is expected to supply water by tankers. But they supply water only to 30 to 40 households a day and that too for just 10 minutes, he added.

A DJB spokesperson admitted receiving complaints.

The first electronic bill kiosk was inaugurated at DJB headquarters here. Five more such centres also started functioning at Preet Vihar, Shivpuri, Greater Kailash-1 and R K Puram to help consumers pay their water bills either through cheque or cash.

"Each centre with two machines have started functioning at six different places in the city. People can now pay their bills any time without any hassle and can also get the receipt immediately," Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said after inaugurating the kiosks.

The DJB has also planned to put similar kiosks at its other offices, including residential colonies.

"We are going to put similar kiosks at Rohini, Ashok Vihar, Subhash Nagar, Janakpuri, Shahdra and Turkman Gate in a phased manner," Harsh Vardhan Tandon, Joint Director of DJB's revenue department, said.

"We have also planned to put more kiosks at various residential areas with the help of Resident Welfare Associations," Tandon told PTI.

The kiosks, equipped with electronic cheque reader, accept cheques while the machine has unique ability to recognise currency. It can automatically detect the fake notes and reject the same, he said.

As a result, sewage has continued to leak into the adjacent storm water drain, posing a serious health and environmental hazard in the locality Residents have already raised fears of outbreak of diseases.

The thick black dirty water is directly flowing into the Yamuna. According to rules, it has to be diverted to a sewage plant where it should be treated before being discharged into the river Justice Shiv Narayan Dhingra was hearing a petition filed by the GK-I residents seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against the DJB for "willfully and knowingly disobeying the order of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog of March 6, 2006 by not carrying out repairs to prevent sullage and sewage through the storm water drain". Justice Nandrajog found the DJB "guilty of polluting the river Yamuna for all these years by this conduct".

Dikshit said this while inaugurating a booster pumping station in Baljeet Nagar.

Local MP Krishna Tirath, chief whip of legislative party Ramakant Goswami, local MLA Rajesh Lilothia and senior officers of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) were among those present on the occasion.

Baljeet Nagar, Bheel Basti, Punjabi Basti, Prem Nagar, Nehru Nagar and Harijan Basti are unauthorised-regularised colonies under the Baljeet Nagar assembly constituency.

These colonies were facing acute shortage of water since long due to its topographical conditions and inadequate network of water supply, a senior DJB officer said.

At present these colonies get potable water supply in night hours through direct pumping from Patel Nagar booster pumping station through existing water supply system, the officer said.

According to the Ministry of Water Resources, existing schemes on the Ground Water Survey, Exploration and Investigation', Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA), and `Studies of Recharge to Ground Water' through Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) till the 10th Plan have now been integrated as one scheme termed as "The Ground Water Management and Regulation".

The objective of the new scheme will be to develop web-enabled ground water information services, design artificial recharge and rain water harvesting projects for replication by states and arrest depletion of ground water through regulatory measures.

The capacity building of scientists, planners and other stakeholders and strengthening of coordination and synergy amongst all other stakeholders is a part of the proposed activities.

Delhi Jal Board has advised people to store water in advance. Tankers will be available at 29234746, 29234747 (Greater Kailash-I), 26473720 (Giri Nagar), 29814106 (Jal Sadan) and 27677877 (Kewal Park).

The channel was slated to be completed by the end of this year.

Propped up as a remedy to the longstanding problem of water shortage in the Capital's areas of Dwarka, Bawana and Okhla, the upcoming 102-km-long Munak Channel will miss its December 2008 deadline. Construction work on the channel is likely to be delayed by at least a couple of months.

According to sources, work on the last leg of the construction has come to a halt because of the presence of a large number of trees that have come in the way of the channel.

"There are about 6,000 trees that have come in the way of the channel. The Haryana Irrigation Department, which is carrying out the construction work, has now sought permission of the Environment and Forests Ministry for felling the trees. The Department has also deposited the money required for carrying out re-plantation," said a source.

The relocation of DJB's bill collection centre has been a long pending demand of the residents of CLZ. According to them, they faced much hardship in reaching the DJB office at Rajpur Road. "The present bill collection centre is located at the CLZ office of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). In the absence of direct bus routes and unavailability of other modes of public transport access to the office is quite an arduous task," complained Praveen Kumar Dhameja, organising secretary of Parmanand Residents Welfare Association.

The Board has also extended the scheme of payment of water bills through 92 post offices, in order to make it convenient for the consumers to pay their water bills. "We found that people prefer paying their bills this way. Earlier, the scheme was being extended on a year-to-year basis but now it will remain in effect till further notice," a senior official said.

Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who attended the meeting, said the 20-million gallons a day (MGD) water treatment plant at Okhla will become operational within 21 months, after work is awarded. The plant is expected to improve the water supply in many areas of the Capital.

The project, with an anticipatory budget of Rs 107 crore, will include the construction of a raw water pumping station at Wazirabad.

The DJB has also sanctioned the 6.3 km Bela Road trunk sewer line, which will be completed by February 2010. The Rs 33 crore-project falls under the Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) Phase II, for which assistance has been received from the Japan Bank for International Corporation.

The DJB also announced that it would begin laying sewer lines in rural villages such as Karawal Nagar, Sadatpur, Dayalpur, etc.

Scheme of payment of water bills through 92 post offices to continue.

The Delhi Jal Board on Wednesday gave its approval for construction of a 20 million gallon per day (MGD) capacity water treatment plant at Okhla that would be completed within 21 months from the award of work. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Board presided over by its chairperson, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

The Board also decided to continue the scheme of payment of water bills through 92 post offices. It approved laying of Bela Road Trunk Sewer through micro-tunnelling, laying of sewer lines in some more rural villages and purchase of 28,000 water meters for the New Delhi Municipal Council.

Indiscriminate dumping of debris around the lake and the adjoining forest area is slowly reducing the surface area of the lake, said the residents, who have formed the Citizen's Group for Protection of Neela Hauz to ensure that the lake is preserved.

"We are not against developmental activities, but it should not damage the environment," said S.B. Lal, a member of the group. He said keeping in view the abysmally low groundwater level in the Vasant Kunj area, preserving water bodies has become a necessity. The group recently had a meeting with officials of the PWD, which has taken up the project.

DJB said the SC's May 10, 2000, order directing Haryana to carry 125 cusecs of water released by the Bhakra-Beas Management Board (BBMB) has been "flouted with impunity".

In the fresh affidavit filed through counsel Suresh Tripathy, DJB said: "Subterfuge adopted by the Haryana government unmistakably establish that it has committed a serious fraud on the court itself thereby obstructing the course of justice and bringing judicial institution into disrepute."