Acute scarcity of potable water has hit the residents of Echai lal Charra under Kadamtala Block in Bagpasa 55 Assembly constituency in Tripura. Their only source of water is a small dirty brook.
During the Left Front regime a well was dug up by the government for the residents of the Paschim Echai lal Charra panchayat. But one CPI-M member of the panchayat Gopika Das had allegedly kept the well inside her residential campus by putting up a fence. The CPI-M is still in power in this panchayat with Basanti Malakar as its president.
Interestingly before the election the Left Front put up another tubewell in the area but people got no water from that. The area is represented by former minister and present MLA Bijita Nath.
More than 30 families live in that area and they are dependent on the small dirty brook. Failing to get any other source they are compelled to bring the water from the brook for their daily use.
The children of this village are infected with skin diseases. Diarrhoea is common in the area.
The women trudge in the hot sun for hours over wastelands, across thorny fields and rough terrain in search of potable water. Most of the people in rural Tripura are facing the water scarcity.
These people currently lack access to safe drinking water, and the situation is only getting worse day by day. The dry spell simply compounds to their woes.