This UP village got piped water after 76 years and has not stopped celebrating

This UP village got piped water after 76 years and has not stopped celebrating

Mirzapur (Uttar Pradesh): On a sunny day in August last year, six-year-old Shivansh splashed into the water for the first time and experienced the joy of an unrestricted fall on his body.

Nearly 76 years after Independence, residents of Lahuria Dah village in the picturesque hills of Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh received piped water for the first time.

The then District Magistrate Divya Mittal turned on a tap installed at the end of a maze of pipes laid by the state government.

Until now, the village’s 1,200 residents had to rely on a nearby spring, which dried up in the summer. Paid tankers were the only means of meeting the village’s water needs.

Kaushalendra Gupta, a resident, said, “We have spent our entire annual budget on water. The arduousness of the task of bringing the water supply line to Lahuria Dah can be gauged from the fact that due to lack of proper planning, the work was stopped midway about a decade ago. The village was also not included in the Jal Jeevan Mission.”

“Before independence, very few families lived with their animals in the village, and their needs would be met in spring, but with the population increasing, spring proved insufficient for our needs,” he said.

Jivanlal Yadav, another resident, recalled that they used to go to the plains to sell milk and come back with water in their containers.

“Over the past 25 to 30 years, water started flowing through tankers and the entire budget of the village was spent on it,” he said.

Water, distributed from tankers, often led to fights between people and caused tensions.

“After an earlier project costing over Rs 4.87 crore failed to yield results and water supply did not reach the village, we met the district magistrate and she took note of the problem. She started new efforts and the new project of over Rs 10 crore was approved,” said Gupta.

Lahuria Dah falls under the limits of Village Panchayat in Devhar. The local administration then sought the help of geophysicists and other technical experts from Banaras Hindu University and formed a joint team of Jal Jeevan Mission, UP Jal Nigam, Namami Gange officials and the chief development officer to find a suitable technology for construction of water supply pipes. to the village located on the hard rocky surface.

After this, a separate proposal for this village was sent to the government, which received approval.

Finally, the tap water supply in the village started on August 31, 2023.

The only well in the village has been used to collect rainwater, while an artificial dam-pond has also been constructed to collect water for the animals as they cannot always get piped water.

The project’s lift pumps that send water to the hilltop village are managed by the Jal Jeevan Mission.

Lahuria Dah, located 49 km from the district headquarters of Mirzapur on the Madhya Pradesh border, has a composite population of Kol, Dharkar, Yadav, Pal and Kesharwani communities.