Kolkata, Dec 4 (IANS): The West Bengal government has started acting tough against the misuse of the drinking water supplied by the state public health engineering (PHE) Department, the state PHE Minister Pulak Roy informed the Assembly on Wednesday.

“Based on a total of 20,000 complaints received by the department, we have already filed 467 FIRs during the last few days. Two dedicated phone lines have been allotted for the common people to lodge their complaints in the matter. We are looking at each complaint quite seriously,” said Roy.

He has also given a breakup of the 467 FIRs registered in the matter.

As per the statistics provided by the minister, the maximum number of FIRs has been registered at Nadia at 83, followed by East Midnapore at 66, North 24 Paragans at 46 and Murshidabad at 34.

The least number of FIRs have been registered at the two north Bengal districts of Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling at just two each. The state government had set a target to provide drinking water connectivity to each and every household in West Bengal by the end of 2025.

Sources said that the connectivity for over 1.77 crores of houses is yet to be completed and work has started on an emergency basis to complete that,

They said that earlier this week, the PHE Minister faced the ire of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the irregularities in the work for ensuring this connectivity.

There had also been complaints of cutting out the pipelines installed by the state government. She also accused the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) of not releasing enough water for the purpose.

“DVC only releases water during the flood. But they are reluctant to supply water for drinking purposes,” the Chief Minister said.