Nagpur Municipal Corporation has ruled out immediate water cuts despite the Maharashtra government’s directive to reduce urban water supply by 10%, saying it will first target leakages, illegal connections and other distribution losses across the city’s network.
The civic body will continue pumping 740 million litres per day (MLD) from the Totladoh reservoir and the Kanhan river for now, Mayor Neeta Thakre told the Times of India. She said the corporation would assess reservoir conditions in the coming days before deciding whether to reduce supply or maintain the current arrangement.
The decision means Nagpur households have been spared an immediate reduction in supply, but it places the responsibility for meeting the conservation objective on the municipal administration. A 10% cut in the city’s current supply would amount to 74 MLD a day.
NMC has identified approximately 259 MLD, or nearly 35% of the 740 MLD supplied to the city, as non-revenue water. The figure includes water lost through pipeline leakages, unauthorised connections and other distribution-related losses. The scale of the loss is substantially larger than the daily reduction required under the state directive.
NMC superintending engineer Shweta Banerjee said the civic body had saved 300 million litres over the previous six days through conservation measures. These included repairing leakages and converting illegal connections into legal ones. The reported saving works out to an average of about 50 MLD per day, although the corporation will need to sustain and measure these gains as part of its wider response.
Banerjee said repair work and action against illegal connections would continue. The civic body has also appealed to residents not to use treated drinking water for activities such as washing cars and cleaning roads.
The immediate decision comes as reservoir levels remain a concern and the city’s water network faces a large gap between treated supply and water that is billed or accounted for. NMC’s approach is therefore to reduce losses within the distribution system rather than impose an across-the-board cut on consumers at this stage.
The corporation’s next decision will depend on its assessment of reservoir conditions and the results of ongoing conservation measures. Until then, Nagpur will continue receiving water at the current planned level, while NMC works to repair leaks and regulate unauthorised connections.
