And you, like nearly 10 lakh Delhiites, will have to wait for a drop of clean water from here till the Haryana Government changes its mind about not releasing water from the Western Yamuna Canal and Bhakra Storage, the only sources of untreated water to the plant. This plant is supposed to service several west Delhi areas like Tikri Border, Mundka, Najafgarh and Papan Kalan, where the Dwarka township has come up.

An average of one lakh people live in each of these places. But water is scarce, even in Mundka former Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma's village.

Dwarka, by far, is the most important area and the worst affected. At least 12,000 flats in the township are unoccupied, many even five years after completion, because there is no water in the area. Of the 40 MGD of water supposed to be treated at the plant, at least half has been earmarked for Dwarka. The current political battle between Delhi and Haryana over theYamuna waters, however, has left the residents wondering whether the project will ever be commissioned.

Delhi Jal Board officials, meanwhile, are also eager the plant starts functioning quickly. ``The construction (90 per cent of which has been done by the National Building Construction Company) is over. If Haryana releases the water today, we can start distributing it in Delhi within three days,'' says Delhi Jal Board engineer V.K.Sabharwal, in charge of the water plant.

In 1992, the first stone for building this plant was laid on a 75-acre plot, off Najafgarh Road in Nangloi. Six years and an expenditure of nearly Rs 65 crore later, the plant was almost ready to be commissioned in October 1998. Then the Assembly elections took place, a Congress-led government took over in Delhi and Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal changed his mind. There are two sources of water for the Nangloi plant: First, the western Yamuna canal, from which water will be pumped out at Bawana and fed to the Nangloi plant through a 22-km long pipeline. And secondly, from Bhakra Storage at Nangal.

This water will then be treated, purified, filtered and fed into 10 huge pipes before it is pumped out towards different parts of the city.``But first we need the water,'' says engineer Sabharwal. He and his colleagues do not have an office. But they have to come here everyday. And they have to bring along their own water bottles.