Mangaluru : Four days after Mangaluru City Corporation resorted to water rationing in the city, political leaders and elected representatives took objection to it on Monday and demanded that the decision should be rolled back.

With no elected council in the corporation for over a month now, as the five-year term has ended, and with leaders having to face people in the coming election to the council, none took the chance to defend the corporation which is under administrator’s rule now.

Both Congress and BJP leaders said that there was no need for water rationing now. According to them, water storage at the Thumbe Vented Dam, which stood at 5.2 m on Monday against the maximum storage level of 6 m, was enough for daily supply for another 30 days to 33 days.

J.R. Lobo, former MLA, Mangaluru City South, Ivan D’Souza, MLC, and Bhaskar K., former Mayor, and other former councillors of the Congress met Deputy Commissioner Sasikanth Senthil S. and urged him to withdraw water rationing.

Mr. Lobo and Mr. D’Souza, who addressed press conferences, said that D. Vedavyasa Kamath, MLA, Mangaluru City South, is politicising the issue by saying that they (both of them) have not done anything to address the water issues of the city. It is not proper to do so, they said. The sitting MLA should not have mixed politics with water scarcity, they said and added that it is an issue of people and should be addressed by all political leaders without political affiliations. Mr. Lobo said that Mr. Kamath should take the lead in solving the problem now.

Mr. Kamath, who visited the vented dam with a team of reporters in the evening along with Premananda Shetty, former Leader of the Opposition in the corporation council, and other BJP leaders and former councillors, said that the corporation should have waited for another 10 days before deciding to start water rationing. He said that he will meet Mr. Senthil tomorrow to discuss the matter.

Mr. Lobo said that daily pumping from the dam to the city should not be stopped. If stopped, it would result in air lock in the two main pipelines of 18 MGD capacity supplying water from the Thumbe to the city. He said that if needed, the corporation can take area-specific decisions on water rationing.

He said that open wells should be cleaned, borewells should be mapped and repaired.

Mr. D’Souza said that the corporation engineers told him that the daily evaporation at Thumbe dam stood at 0.55 MCM against the daily consumption of water in the city which is at 0.16 MCM.

He said that the corporation can supply water on alternative days.