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The entire State of Manipur has been facing acute shortage of water due to the failure of the main water supply project at Singda in Imphal. Official sources said if the state did not receive any rainfall within the next few days, the dam would be without a single drop of water. Meanwhile, Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) Minister T N Haokip visited the Singda dam site and met village chiefs to discuss about the maintenance of the dam. People of Imphal city, who depend entirely on water supply by the PHED, were most affected by the water shortage.

Chief Minister P.K.Dhumal warned today that water scarcity and other environment-related problems were bound to get aggravated unless effective steps were taken to reverse the process of global warming and asserted that the Centre must compensate the hill states that were playing a vital role in reducing greenhouse gases by maintaining forest cover.

Domestic water supply in the city has been increased by three million litres daily (mld) for a week now to meet the rising demand in the summer months. According to a Chennai Metrowater official, the water supplied to domestic consumers through pipeline and tankers has been increased to 586 mld to match the rising demand. The total volume of water supplied to the city, including industrial and bulk purposes, has been increased from 645 mld to 650 mld.

With the mercury ever on the rise, Samdrup Jongkhar is a place where life cannot be imagined without water. But this was exactly what residents of the busy town had been enduring for the past few days - living without water. In scorching heat, people carrying jerry cans in their cars and driving kilometres to fetch water has become a common sight these days. "It's a hot place and we need to take a bath every now and then, but there is no water,' said Kunzang, a private employee. "Forget about baths, we don't have water to drink and cook food.'

Indiscriminate digging up of road sides in Himachal Pradesh are known to have posed dangers to many lives while driving on roads, but this time it has become responsible for aggravating Shimla's water problems. The telecom department, while laying its telephone cables, has damaged nearly 15 kilometres of main supply line of the drinking scheme, which was planned to solve the water crisis in the town.

Electricity loadshedding and deficient water supply made it difficult for the people in the city to spend the weekly holiday in hot weather. Staying indoors in the absence of power or going out in the blazing sun was like living in hell. The wind was too hot to be braved, making the city streets deserted for almost the entire day. However, locals visited parks and open places in the evening to have a relief. Youngsters found some respite by flocking to the city canal without caring how much its water was polluted.

London-based Vedanta Resources's chairman Anil Agarwal may be claiming that his projects in Orissa are well on schedule, but the ground reality is somewhat different. The group's Rs 8,400 crore aluminium project in Orissa is in serious trouble. With locals snapping the water supplyline to the project, work on the site at Jharsuguda has been affected.

BANDIPORA: Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives Abdul Aziz Zargar said that government is committed to provide all basic facilities to the people of the state. He said road connectivity, adequate drinking water facility, power, health and education are the top most priority sectors of the government. Minister was addressing a large public gathering at Erin Bandipora today.

Water has become a mirage for the Narmada Project oustees rehabilitated here from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, who agreed to give up their irrigated farms back home to ensure that the Sardar Sarovar Dam project became the lifeline of the waterstarved people of Gujarat.

Though there is an economic boom in India there is a flipside to it too. According to estimates there are 80.7 million urban poor in India and a housing shortage of 24.7 million, says Kumari Selja, minister of state (independent charge), housing and urban poverty alleviation.

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