Ramprasath Manohar, Deputy Commissioner and in-charge Chief Executive Officer of the Ballari Zilla Panchayat, has directed officials to accord priority to hire private borewells to ease the likely drinking water crisis in view of a deficient monsoon, instead of going in for drilling new borewells.
The instructions were issued at a Karnataka Development Programme review meeting on Friday.
Mr. Ramprasath wanted the officials of the rural drinking water supply section to convince the owners of private borewells to give it out to help ease a likely water crisis. If the response was not positive, suitable provisions of the law should be invoked and the borewells should be seized, he said. Mr. Ramprasath wanted the officials to identify villages that were likely to face the crisis and initiate steps to overcome it.
