Bengaluru, beware! Wells of hell here

On Monday night, the body of six-year-old Kaveri was retrieved from a borewell in Belagavi. While there have been no incidents of this sort yet in Bengaluru, the city remains at risk as illegal borewells continue to be drilled and abandoned ones are left uncapped. The onus rests with the owners of these borewells, who need to be brought to justice quickly to deter others from being negligent too. What are authorities waiting for? Will it take a tragedy to prompt us into action, asks Aknisree Karthik

It was an innocent outing to collect firewood , but it ended with six- year-old  Kaveri Ajit Madar falling into an open  dry borewell in a Belagavi village. Fifty four hours later, she was found dead Monday night, despite the best efforts to save her. Her grieving mother, a daily wage earner, wished that no other child should suffer a similar fate. Just a couple of weeks previously, on April 12, two other persons died after they fell into a dry borewell in Gadag district.

While there have been no such deaths in Bengaluru yet, the risk remains as illegal borewells continue to be drilled in the city despite the BWSSB rules, which impose a penalty and even a jail term on  those responsible. It was in 2013 that BWSSB permission was made mandatory for sinking of borewells in the city. Since then of the 16,571 applications received, the board has approved 6,698 and even now on an average receives over 30 new applications every month owing to the growing scarcity of water in Bengaluru.

Considering the city's falling water table, the board claims it says a clear no to sinking of borewells for commercial reasons and permits only those required for domestic purposes.

Says Mr Kemparamaiah, engineer in chief, BWSSB, "If a resident wants to sink a borewell he has to fill an application, pay the challan fee and submit the application to us. We in turn forward it to the Department of Mines and Geology for clearance and only if it approves do we grant permission."

The mines and geology officials check if there are any public borewells within a radius of 500 meters or if the area falls in an over-exploited zone and also the quality of ground water before granting permission, he explains,

Although aware that this procedure is often flouted, especially in the peripheral areas of the city, where there is still no piped water supply, BWSSB officials say they  lack the manpower to monitor illegal borewell drilling.

The outcome can obviously be dangerous as not everyone hits water when sinking borewells.

Those who don’t, abandon the well, often leaving it uncovered  to become a deathtrap in waiting.

Defunct borewells left uncapped cause tragedies: Expert

Bengaluru cannot afford to be complacent just because there have been no cases of people falling into borewells and dying  in the city as yet, says water expert and former irrigation secretary, Captain Raja Rao.

"No civic agency has the exact number of borewells in the city as even after it was made mandatory for people to seek BWSSB permission to sink them, hardly anyone bothers to approach it. They simply sink a borewell when they need one,” he points out.

The former bureaucrat strongly believes the owner of a defunct borewell that has been left uncapped must be held  responsible if people fall into it and die.

“Tragedies happen as various bodies like the departments of Minor Irrigation ,  Mines and Geology and Revenue,  the village panchayats and water boards do not insist on defunct borewells being capped by their owners," he says.

“People happily extract water if the borewell yields it. But if it does not, they simply abandon it without bothering to cap it. And in many cases the casing (used to prevent mixing of soil with the water) is also removed and sold,” Capt. Rao regrets, urging the government to at least wake up now and put a full stop to such tragedies by insisting that all open defunct borewells be capped.

But an official of the BWSSB claims that as the diameter of borewells sunk in Bengaluru is not more than 10mm , the chances of children or anyone else being trapped in them are pretty slim when compared to  borewells in nothern India.