Further water tariff hikes likely on the cards for Delhi citizens

In 2010, DJB had decided water charges would be raised 10% every year

A day after the Delhi government increased water charges 10 per cent for households consuming more than 20,000 litres a month, a senior Delhi Jal Board (DJB) official on Friday said the national capital might see another round of price rise for the commodity next year.

On Thursday, the government had said the rise in water charges was “to keep the financial health of DJB intact”. Last month, the Delhi government had announced free water supply to households consuming up to 20,000 litres of water a month.

In 2010, the DJB had decided water charges would be raised 10 per cent every year. However, at the last two DJB board meetings, in December 2014 and January this year, it had deferred the increase in water rates, earlier scheduled to be effective January 1 this year. In its election manifesto, the Aam Aadmi Party had promised it would do away with the mandatory 10 per cent annual rise in water charges. However, no decision on this was taken at the DJB board meeting held on Friday.

“The board’s decision of an annual rise was deferred in the previous meetings. We had explored numerous ways to tackle this. However, we finally decided to go for a rise of 10 per cent with immediate effect, retrospectively from January 1,” a senior DJB official said on condition of anonymity.

He added the proposal of a 10 per cent rise in water charges next year would be taken up at coming board meetings.

Such a move will affect those consuming more than 20,000 litres of water a month, as well as those without functional metered water connections. The DJB official quoted earlier said though 2.1 million households had water connections, only 1.3 million had functional meters.

The DJB official said, “Power and establishment costs account for about 85 per cent of DJB’s total non-planned expenditure. As power rates rise and the outgo in terms of daily allowance and salaries increases, it has an average fallout of 10 per cent on our budget. A decision on an annual rate rise will have to be taken at the next meeting.”