Bengalureans will have to suffer the water tanker's stranglehold over the city this year as well

BENGALURU: Bengaluru's powerful water tanker mafia put a terse warning last week: Don't mess with us. A group of tanker operators allegedly murdered a small-time water supplier who dared to encroach on their ter ritory in Electronic City , a clear signal that as summer sets in early , Bengalureans will have to suffer the mafia's stranglehold over the city this year as well.
Turf wars aren't uncommon among water tanker operators. But their domination is assuming threatening proportions now as successive governments failed to keep pace with Bengaluru's rapid expansion, leaving emerging fringes such as Electronic City, Whitefield and Sarjapur Road unconnected to the city's water network and at the mercy of the tanker operators.

"We are fully-dependent on tanker water as the lakes here have been encroached and all the borewells have drained," said Shiva Kumar, a resident of Suncity on Sarjapur Road, that has 1,300 apartments. "This apartment (complex) needs 140 tankers a day. The water supplier charges Rs 500 for each tanker, and per day it will be Rs 70,000 and monthly it will be Rs 21 lakh."

Prices go up to Rs 900-1,200 per tanker as summer peaks. This makes the unregulated water tanker business highly profitable, making territorial reservations inevitable.

"There is a lot of competition between the suppliers with many new apartments coming up in this newly developed area," said Ravi Narayana, a resident of Lake View Apartments in Singasandra near ACS Layout."There were lots of fights between the suppliers; sometimes they even threatened the residents not to take water from others."

Venkatashiva Reddy , 45, the smalltime tanker operator who met his end allegedly in one such turf war, was from Singasandra. Based on preliminary investigation, police suspect Reddy was killed as he ventured to expand his business to Electronic City , encroaching on an area dominated by rival operators. "Water suppliers won't allow other suppliers into their area. They all have their own territories and understanding. If someone else enters into their territory, there will be big fights," said Kumar, also a member of the Sarjapur Outer Ring Road Residence Welfare Association.

His claims aren't exaggerated.

When ET called some fleet operators to supply water, nearly all of them refused to service areas not demarcated for them. Srinivas, who operates a couple of water tankers, refused to come from Lingar -ajapuram to Hebbal saying the city had been divided among the fleet owners and he couldn't operate outside his territory.

The government has been un able to rein in the 20,000-odd tankers that take over the city's roads every summer. Under a 2011 Act, the groundwater de partment is mandated with overseeing the quality of water supplied by tanker operators, but has no proper mandate to regulate their operations.