Problems galore at Munak Canal

residents of Bawana in northwest Delhi awoke to a scene of chaos. A river seemed to have erupted overnight, flooding streets and seeping knee-deep into homes.

- Paras Singh

Early on July 11 last year, residents of Bawana in northwest Delhi awoke to a scene of chaos. A river seemed to have erupted overnight, flooding streets and seeping knee-deep into homes. A 40-foot section of the Delhi Sub Branch (DSB) of the Munak Canal had collapsed near the Hanuman Mandir. It was the third such breach in just two years, and it laid bare a growing crisis in Delhi's primary water supply system.

Repair teams were rushed in, but for three to four days, water supply remained disrupted in vast parts of the Capital, including Haiderpur, Bawana, Nangloi, and Dwarka. Since then, two more breaches have been reported near Barwasni village in Sonipat, even as water stress in the city continues to deepen. The 102-kilometre Munak Canal, which ferries nearly 37% of the Capital's raw water, has become increasingly vulnerable crumbling in places, leaking in others, and plagued by theft and encroachments.

A year later, the scars of the 2023 breach remain visible. A few metres from the Hanuman Mandir, Md Shoib stands on a makeshift iron bridge over the canal, pointing to a jagged crack along the concrete wall. "Plastic sheets have been placed to slow the seepage, but there are many such points," he said. "We warned authorities last year too. Nobody listened."

A fragile artery

Built between 2003 and 2012 as part of the Western Yamuna Canal system, the Munak Canal conveys over 1,000 cusecs of Yamuna water daily to Delhi via two offshoots—the Carrier Line Channel (CLO) and the DSB. But over the last two years, three major breaches (June 2023, October 2023, and July 2024) have exposed a fragile network ill-equipped to handle rising demand.