Telangana Municipal Administration Minister K Taraka Rama Rao said the state government will implement its free water scheme for up to 20,000 litres in the first week of January. Under the scheme, the state government has said that no charges would be collected for consumption of up to 20,000 litres in the bills of domestic consumers. The move is expected to benefit a little less than 10 lakh households, according to the government.

KTR said the scheme will be applied for this month itself so as to make sure that the bills will reflect the same in January. As directed by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, officials started the mechanism to implement the scheme. Rao met with Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and other officials to deliberate extensively over the scheme.

"We will start this free water scheme for the benefit of all the people in Hyderabad as well very soon," said Rao. KCR directed officials to plan for the scheme in the next two weeks. He also instructed officials to communicate effectively about the scheme to all the people.

The state government has already implemented Mission Bhagiratha, a scheme that ensures safe drinking water directly to the households of the residents of the state, which has been dubbed a relative success and even helped the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the recent Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls.

The announcement by KTR on Saturday came even as a drinking water pipeline was damaged at Rethibowli, in Hyderabad’s Mehdipatnam, where some digging work was underway The damage resulted in heavy spillage of water near pillar number 53 of the PVNR Expressway that leads to the Hyderabad airport. Videos of the incident showed water gushing out like a fountain from the damaged pipeline and flooding the entire area. 

With IANS inputs