Residents of parched Adityapur may look forward to piped water supply by March 2022.

Chief minister Raghubar Das laid the foundation stone for a mega drinking water project in Adityapur on Saturday afternoon. If all goes well, the Rs 395-crore project will be ready in 36 months, enabling all 49,335 households access to piped water at home in densely-populated Adityapur and parts of Gamharia under Adityapur Municipal Corporation (AMC).

Chief minister Das, who laid the foundation stone at an event at S-Type football grounds in Adityapur, said he had earlier promised that residents of Adityapur would get civic facilities such as sewage network, drinking water and roads. “Work on the Rs 235 crore sewage system is in progress and will be ready by 2021. Now, work on the drinking water project will start,” a visibly happy chief minister said. He added the two important projects could be launched because AMC mayor Vinod Srivastava had made a concerted effort to get them sanctioned by the urban development department.

In all, 500km of pipelines would be laid to benefit a population over 2.5 lakh through 11 additional water towers and two filtration plants in the Adityapur municipality area.

One filtration plant with a capacity to filter 30 MLD will be set up at Sitarampur dam and another with a 60 MLD capacity at Sapra near Subernarekha river.

Right now, the Sitarampur dam has a filtration plant but with a capacity of 5 MLD only, enabling 7,800 families to get piped water.

Das added that as population in every township was burgeoning, existing housing and related facilities such as drinking water, sewage, road communication were a problem.

“But we have taken these problems as challenges to address. We are aware of people’s inconveniences,” the chief minister said at the event where BJP state president Laxman Gilua, urban development minister C.P. Singh, Jamshedpur MP Bidyut Baran Mahto, urban development department secretary Ajoy Kumar Singh, AMC mayor Vinod Srivastava and BJP Seraikela-Kharsawan president Ganesh Mahali were also present.

Noted social worker and Jan Kalyan Morcha president Om Prakash, also present at the function, said, “The AMC should follow Bureau of Indian Standards norms and ensure supply of 200 litres for domestic consumption per head per day in Adityapur.”

CM returns land

CM Raghubar Das on Saturday returned over 70 acres to 50 residents of Krishnapur and Bandi villages in Adityapur at the event to launch piped water supply. Adityapur Industrial Area Development Authority (Aiada) had acquired the land in 1978 to set up industrial units, but as nothing materialised, the government returned the land to the owners.