Formation of Kerala Drinking Water Supply Company Ltd.

On April 9, Ponnath Devarajan, city councillor for Marad, a communally sensitive fishing hamlet that faces water shortage, moved a resolution before the Kozhikode Corporation Council against a government order for forming Kerala Drinking Water Supply Company Ltd.
He said the company, described by the Water Resources Department in its December 31, 2012, order as one modelled after Cochin International Airport Ltd., was a sheer effort to commodify water, a natural resource and public asset.

New Delhi: Is water privatization really needed in Delhi?

Apex court specifies that air, water, sea and forests cannot be with private sector

A social republic like India cannot have water in private ownership and deny the citizens their right to quality water at affordable prices, said Justice Rajinder Sachar here on Tuesday, criticising the Delhi Government’s move to undertake three public-private partnership projects in the city. Speaking at a conference on “Water Privatisation: Learning from India and International Experiences”, Justice Sachar said: “There is nothing above the Constitution.

Is the PPP model going to work in the field of drinking water services?

Former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court Rajinder Sachar called on Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday to discuss government proposal to privatise the supply of water in the national capital. Calling the move unconstitutional, Justice Sachar said he was "totally against the idea of privatising what is a citizen's basic right".

Justice Sachar, as patron of the Water Privatisation-Commercialisation Resistance Committee, met Dikshit in her office. "The privatisation of water is unconstitutional since our Constitution gives each citizen a right to live, and water is among the most basic of needs to survive. I am against any idea to charge huge sums of money for water," Justice Sachar told reporters after the meeting.

Jalasaksharatha Mission-Kerala has demanded that the government abandon its move to form a company to distribute drinking water.

In a statement, the organisation’s Executive Director C.A. Vijayachandran, said the proposed company, to be formed on the model of Cochin International Airport Limited, would sell water based on profit.

Not satisfied with the Delhi Jal Board’s explanation that private companies are being roped in to “enhance services and reduce non-revenue water”, a non-government organisation, Water Privatisation-Commercialisation Resistance Committee, has torn into the arguments and called for an open debate and discussion on the issue of initiating public private partnership programmes in the city.

The DJB has decided to initiate PPP programmes in three areas of the city to streamline distribution and revenue collection. The areas are Malviya Nagar, Vasant Vihar and Nangloi.

A day after the National Development Council meeting, the UPA government on Friday would seek the consent of the Chief Ministers to adopt the National Water Policy, the draft of which has already c