Chennai: Scorching heat and delayed monsoon have crippled Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu with an acute water crisis.
Indian authorities on Thursday filled tanks with water and loaded them onto a train in Tamil Nadu to supply its manufacturing capital Chennai where reservoirs have run dry.
A senior official of the Southern Railway said the water wagon would by arriving at Villivakkam where State Ministers would be present to receive the train.
Officials say the trains would take around five hours to reach Chennai’s Villivakkam, 220 km away, from where water would be pumped to the Kilpauk Water Works, the pumping station that distributes water to localities in the city.
Various hotels and restaurants in the city have stopped offering meals at noon due to water shortage. People are forced to draw water from the ground illegally and over 200 motors have been seized by the Chennai Metro water department.
Chennai is one of the 21 Indian cities that the government think tank NITI Aayog has said would run out of water by 2021.
