Pondy govt has no long term plan on drinking water crisis: AIADMK

The party’s legislature wing leader A Anbazhagan told reporters here that though funds wereprocured from the European Union to desilt and rejuvenate lakes and water bodies, nothing had been done to ensure storage of rainwater.

He also alleged that the rainwater harvesting scheme was not implemented properly, resulting in Puducherry facing a water crisis.

Anbazhagan said he was ‘perplexed’ to note that Chief Minister V Narayanasamy, during his meeting with the Prime Minister in New Delhi on Saturday, present a memorandum on the ‘hackneyed’ subjects of statehood for the UT, waiver of loans to the Centre and inclusion of Puducherry in the Central Finance Commission.

“Several serious issues like steps to ensure water availability, reopening of defunct mills like AFT, Swadeshi and Bharathi Mills were hanging in the balance, which the CM failed toraise either in the memorandum or later at the Niti Aayog meeting,” he said.

He said Narayanasamy sought an assistance of Rs 500 crore to renovate the Legislative Assembly building, where the session will not take place for more than 15 days in a year, while he failed to seek Rs 500 crore for the modernisation of the now defunct AFT mills and did not mention statehood and waiver of legacy loan.

The AIADMK leader said the Smart City project was not taken up properly, though funds were released by the Centre and the French government.

Claiming that the rule of law was not being enforced in Puducherry, Anbazhagan said the Chief Minister had ‘wasted’ three years in office by criticising the Central Government,Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi and the Oppositionparties, instead of considering the development of the UnionTerritory or welfare of the people.

“Further, he should shed his style of functioning as if he were the president of a political party,” he said, appealing to the Chief Minister to activate the government machinery and extend full cooperation to the Centre to develop Puducherry.