Political retaliation deprives Kolkata Muslim colony without water for months
Kolkata: Residents of Jyoti Nagar, a Muslim-majority slum colony in Kolkata, West Bengal, have been without piped water for several months, forcing around 5,000 people to rely on costly water tankers and polluted river water. Local activists have said that the water supply was cut off as political retaliation after the community did not vote for the local BJP MLA, Ritesh Tiwari, in the recent assembly elections.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Umar Owais, a social activist and secretary of the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) in West Bengal, in a media interview, said that the water connection had not been restored since it was disconnected on 29 May.
“This is a slum area and the land where these people are living belongs to the port. They have been living there for 70 years. There are documents like death certificates which show that people are living there for 70 years. Muslims of the area have not voted for BJP in the latest assembly elections,” Owais said.
He also highlighted changes in the electoral rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), saying, “There were 800 voters in the area before the conduct of the SIR. After the completion of the SIR, there were 450 voters left there and 150 voters are under adjudication.”
Owaisi also said that local BJP MLA Ritesh Tiwari had previously vowed not to work for Muslims as they had not voted for him. He said port officials subsequently served eviction notices on residents and cut off their water connections.
Owaisi led an APCR delegation to the colony, where they interacted with affected families and examined documents. He said Muslim residents were being treated differently from those living in a nearby non-Muslim-majority area despite both communities being located along the same bank of the Ganges and on land belonging to the port.
“Their crime is that they are Muslims. A little away from the area dominated by Muslims, there is an area dominated by non-Muslim residents in the same line. The area dominated by non-Muslim residents has a water connection. Both areas have the same location along the bank of the Ganges. The whole land belongs to the port,” he said.
With municipal water unavailable, residents have been paying around Rs 700 per tanker load or collecting water from neighboring Hindu-majority areas. Many have developed skin diseases after being forced to use polluted river water.
The APCR has written to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Commissioner (KMC), demanding the immediate restoration of the water supply. “The residents have also raised allegations of discriminatory treatment. APCR considers these allegations serious and calls for an impartial verification of the facts,” the organization said in its letter.
Meanwhile, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee President Subhankar Sarkar has also intervened, raising concerns over both eviction notices and the denial of civic services to residents.
As of now, no official response had been received from the KMC or the local BJP MLA Ritesh Tiwari’s office regarding the allegations or the demands raised by the APCR and Congress committee.
