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Drought leaves railways short of water and passengers fuming

Railway rules mandate that each coach of a train must have all its four tanks — each with a capacity of 900 litres — full when the journey begins.

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Commuters travelling on the 22113 Kurla-Kochuveli Express had a harrowing time on Wednesday as the sleeper coaches were making their way through Kerala without any water aboard. The AC coaches were replenished when the train reached Shoranur junction, but, commuters said, the sleeper coaches had to wait much longer.

While the railways might be getting kudos for its water-supply duties towards parched Latur and other towns, for the railways itself, the situation with water supply to its trains and stations has been among its worst in several years because of the severe drought in many parts of the country. While figures are being tabulated at the highest levels at the Railway Board, officials in Mumbai said the shortfall when compared to the demand is about 30%.

Railway rules mandate that each coach of a train must have all its four tanks — each with a capacity of 900 litres — full when the journey begins. They must be topped up every eight to 10 hours depending on the usage, said officials. Apart from that, the thumb rule is that each station must get at least 25 litres of water per passenger at the station.

The general agreement for the railways is that a stipulated amount would be bought from the local civic body and the balance from tanker-water suppliers. The drought has meant that the civic body has cut supply considerably and tanker suppliers want to take advantage of the shortage with better rates. Central Railway's Mumbai division had a run-in with a cartel of tanker owners, who overnight increased prices from Rs70 per 1,000 litres (7 paise per litre) to Rs150 per 1,000 litres (15 paise per litre).

"It has caused a shortfall of water at Kurla terminus as well as at CST, both of which require above 1 million litres per day. Unfortunately, if there is a bunch of trains that depart when the supply at the station is at its lowest or when the tankers have not come in, those trains will leave with less water in their storage tanks," said a senior railway official.

Another aspect of the railway's problems with water is that the commuter has to pay that much more for bottled water. The railways own estimate of bottled water is around 25 lakh bottles per day. Of this, railways' own IRCTC, with its four bottling plants, has a capacity of 6.14 lakh bottles per day.

"If the railways does an assessment by the end of this summer, it will realise that the sale of bottled water might have crossed 30 lakh bottles per day. This is because in several trains people are buying four to five bottles to use in emergency in case the train runs out of water," said a commuter.

Railways' ideal amount of water

25: Litres per day per passenger
3,600: Litres per coach
6: Number of water taps per platform at suburban stations
12: Number of taps per platform for other stations
100: Force of water hydrant at litre per minute

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