Rajya Sabha MP Pradeep Kumar Balmuchu of the Congress and some 150 Adityapur residents under the aegis of Nagarik Sammanvay Samiti on Friday staged a daylong dharna before the drinking water and sanitation department's Seraikela division office, demanding restart of desiltation work at Sitarampur dam.

The dharna that started at 11am went on till 2pm.

Balmuchu apart, protesters included workers from Congress, BJP and JMM.

The department's Seraikela division started desilting the dam, 20km from Jamshedpur, on May 3 at the behest of chief secretary Rajbala Verma but had to stop work midway on May 10 following opposition from local villagers residing around the water body.

However, though the department had chalked out a May 31 deadline to finish the work, no action had been taken to resume work, the samiti noted, which triggered the Friday protest.

"Sitarampur dam is the only reservoir in this region which supplies drinking water to about three lakh people of Adityapur," said Sunil Kumar Srivastava, a key functionary of the samiti.

"But as the dam had never been desilted since its inception five decades ago, two metres of silt accumulated, causing the water-storing capacity to reduce considerably. If the department does not desilt the dam before monsoon, residents of Adityapur will have to face acute drinking water crisis next year," he said.

Superintending engineer, DW&SD, Rajendra Prasad said they did start desilting the dam on an urgent basis.

"But after the villagers disrupted it, we stopped work. We have now made an estimate of Rs 14 crore which will be needed for completing the desilting work and also for repairing the spillway gates. It awaits departmental sanction. Once the money is sanctioned, we will follow a tender process and then resume work," said Prasad.

Om Prakash, president of local NGO Jan Kalyan Morcha, said that the DW&SD has to not only desilt the dam, but also repair the spillway gates.

However, the villagers opposing the desilting work would stage a dharna in front of the Seraikela subdivisional officer from Saturday.

BJP MLA from Ichagarh Sadhu Mahto, leading the villagers in their protest, he was not opposed to desilting work.

But, he said some 560 villagers whose forefathers had parted with land for the dam construction's construction, needed compensation. Earlier, only five displaced had got government jobs.