Press : Shri Tarun Vijay raising the issue of severe water scarcity in Andaman & Nicobar islands in RS

No water for Andamans-how an Island is left gasping for drinking water-Tarun Vijay raises the issue in Parliament

Also, it has memorial to the British Viceroy, but not for Sher Ali Khan, who was hanged by British

18th May 2012-New Delhi - Raising the issue of severe water scarcity in Andamans and Nicobar islands, BJP MP Tarun Vijay today demanded in Rajya Sabha in a special mention that a pilgrim centre of India's freedom struggle shouldn't be ignored. Andamans Islands, 500 in total and app 32 habitated, are surrounded by water, strategically too important for Indian defence, yet the people get twenty minutes to half hour water supply in a week during summer. The British had a desalination plant to convert sea water into drinking water hundred years ago, but in independent India there is not a single desalination plant established here and the local citizens are depending only on the rain water reservoir. Not a single Island has been connected with road or a bridge and except ferry services, not connectivity is available to the citizens, who still feel deprived and ignored, as if the punishment period of the British has not ended till today for them.

Andmans rarely appears in Parliament discussions except when it is hit by Tsunami. Is it because the votes are too scarce and there is no political pressure from the docile citizens living there? Tarun Vijay told media persons. "Where have disappeared our pan Indian concerns? He asked.

He demanded in the Rajya Sabha that attention be paid to the problems and demands of the people of Andaman Nicobar islands.

All Islands are named after the British. People demand renaming them after Indian revolutionaries. There are security concerns also. The Indian Coast Guard apprehended 135 Bangladeshis on 3rd April 2012.

A home to great tribes, like Jarawas, people live in severe water shortage and often water supply is limited to twenty minutes to half hour per week, during peak shortage period. There is no Desalination plant, although the British had one, a hundred years before.

The only existing reservoir at Dhanikhari fails to meet the demand of potable water. I demand to create estuarine reservoir at Flat Bay on a war footing and erect a memorial to Sher Ali Khan, who killed Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India on 8th of February, 1872 and was given death penalty on the 11th of March 1873.The people are deeply perturbed to see a memorial to Lord Mayo has been erected post independence but there is no memorial of revolutionary Sher Ali Khan, who acted to take revenge against the British. Hence I demand that the memorial to Lord Mayo be removed and an appropriate memorial to Sher Ali Khan erected in Port Blair.