Patna, March 7: Even before summer sets in, Bihar is reeling from acute water shortage with tubewells going dry because of the falling groundwater levels.

“I have been alert on this issue for quite some time and have been alerting the departments concerned. This should be treated as a natural disaster,” emphasised chief minister Nitish Kumar, stressing that money would not be a constraint in ensuring availability of water to human life and cattle. He said water would be taken to human beings in tankers, while camps will be held for drinking water to cattle.

In his reply to a call attention in the Bihar Assembly on Monday, Nitish declared that the government would use water tankers to make available drinking water to people. “Right now, the problem of falling groundwater has hit just two districts, Jehanabad and Arwal. But I apprehend that the problem will arise in all the districts falling south of Ganga,” Kumar said, pointing out that the acute water crisis could be attributed to the drought in these areas in the past two consecutive years.

Earlier, public health and engineering department minister Chandra Mohan Rai conceded that groundwater levels had dropped to alarming levels in Jehanabad and other adjoining districts. “Previously, water was available 25 feet below the ground level. However, groundwater levels have now plummeted to around 50 feet, resulting in several tubewells going dry, he remarked. He said that his department had worked out a contingency plan for sinking around 5,000 deep boring tubewells, which would go 70 to 80 feet below down the ground level. “We will use drills to ensure deep boring,” he remarked.

However, the minister’s reply did not appear to convince MLAs belonging to the Magadh region. Many of them alleged that the situation was alarming in their region and people had to walk long distances to fetch drinking water. Several of them alleged that contractors given the tenders to sink tubewells were doing a shoddy job and many of the tubewells, which had been sunk recently, were going dry. The minister asked the MLAs to provide him specific details of such tubewells and promised to take action against the officials and contractors concerned.

In response to another question related to shortage of IPS officers, minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said: “The state has written to the Centre asking for 16 probationary IPS officers next year to overcome the their shortage.” In reply to another question, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi pointed out that about Rs 1.07 lakh crore was deposited in the banks of Bihar while the credit stood at roughly Rs 37,000 crore. He said there were problems with commercial banks in the state lending money. “But owing to our continuous monitoring, the situation is improving,” he claimed.

He said that clear-cut guidelines have been given to government departments not to deposit their money in private banks which were reluctant to give credit in Bihar. In response to a demand made by MLAs to call the Union finance minister to Bihar to increase the credit deposit ratio Modi said it has been Bihar’s experience that when two previous finance ministers (P. Chidamabaram and Yashwant Sinha) had visited Bihar in their official capacity, the credit deposit ratio had dropped.