The Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) has appealed to chief minister Mamata Banerjee to inaugurate the alternative intake well set up at the water treatment plant in Fulbari here.

On Monday, Mamata will reach here on a four-day visit to north Bengal. She will head for the hills and return to Siliguri on November 14. Some official events have been lined up during her trip to the hills.

Dulal Dutta, the member, mayor-in-council (water & health) of the Trinamool Congress-run SMC, said mayor Gautam Deb had requested the chief minister through the Darjeeling district administration to inaugurate the intake well.

Mamata’s visit to the hills will be almost after a year while she will be in Darjeeling after two years. In December, she was in Kurseong to attend a family function.

The well stores water drawn from the Teesta canal. The water is then treated and distributed in Siliguri.

“The chief minister will attend some official events. The mayor has requested her to inaugurate the intake well during such events,” said Dutta.

He said the new intake well, built at a cost of ₹6.9 crore, was ready for operation.

“The existing intake well has become old and often needed maintenance, especially during monsoons when silt gets deposited in it. It would eventually disrupt the water supply in the city. Now that we have an alternative well, the problem will be mitigated to some extent,” Dutta added.

The SMC, along with the state PHE department, is also executing a mega drinking water project as the existing water treatment plant can’t meet the daily requirements of the city.

The project has been taken up under the central government’s Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut 2.0) scheme with an estimated cost of ₹511 crore.

In the first phase, around ₹204 crore will be spent on the project. Pipelines will be laid, an intake well (other than the ready one) will be built and a power station will be established at the treatment plant in the first phase.

According to the plan, water would be drawn from the Teesta river at Gajoldoba in Jalpaiguri district.

“From Friday, we started laying the 27km-long pipeline from Gajoldoba to Fulbari. The pipeline will move through different areas of the Rajganj block of Jalpaiguri and a portion of the Baikunthapur forest,” the source added.