Bhubaneswar, Oct. 27: The state government today signed an agreement with a private player and various stakeholders to take up a bulk water supply project in the city at a cost of Rs 188 crore in public-private partnership mode.

The project will supply water to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), National Institute of Science Education and Research (Niser) and various industrial establishments, including Infocity-II, which is coming up on the city outskirts.

Housing and urban development secretary G. Mathi Vathanan said the Rs 188-crore project would be operational by April 2017. This project would benefit more than two lakh population with uninterrupted supply of clean drinking water at an affordable rate.

He said Odisha was the first state to execute such complex water supply project with multiple beneficiaries in the PPP mode. The project, financed under the Viability Gap Funding of the central government, has been provided with Rs 50 crore to be shared jointly by the Centre and the state government.

Under the project, raw water will be drawn from the Mahanadi river near Munduli and treated subsequently for supply to various beneficiaries. The project will be integrated with the existing water supply system of Khurda and Jatni towns.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who was present on the occasion, said: “In addition to providing drinking water to national institutes such as the IIT and Niser, it will also provide access to clean drinking water to people in the Khurda and Jatni municipalities. The project is in fulfilment of the long-term aspiration of the people of the State Capital Region.”

He hoped that the urban development department would take up more such urban infrastructure PPP project in future.

The concession or revenue sharing agreement was signed between state government’s public health engineering organisation and MEIL (Bhubaneswar) Bulk Water Supply Project Private Limited, formed by consortium of Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Limited and Koya & Company Construction Limited.

MEIL (Bhubaneswar) Bulk Water Supply Project Private Limited, a leading Hyderabad-based infrastructure firm, has successfully completed many infrastructure projects across the country, said a senior official of the state housing and urban development department.

The project has been awarded on design-build-finance-operate-transfer basis for a period of 25 years, after which it would be handed over to the government.

The bulk water supply agreement was signed among the public health engineering organisation, IIT, Niser and the state-owned Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation.