The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has instructed officials to ensure that every water tank in the city is cleaned twice a year after a report highlighted major gaps in the maintenance of water distribution station tanks, including 21 tanks that had not been cleaned for more than a year.
The directive was issued by Standing Committee chairman Kamlesh Patel during a committee meeting where the cleaning of Ahmedabad’s water tanks was discussed. Patel said the corporation has 243 water tanks and that each must be cleaned once every six months, with continuous monitoring of the work.
The action follows a report by Gujarat Samachar Digital published on October 6, which said that only 95 of 241 water distribution station tanks had been cleaned during the preceding six-month period, despite the prescribed cleaning cycle. The report said 125 tanks had been cleaned between six and 12 months earlier, while 21 had gone more than a year without cleaning.
According to the report, this meant that 146 of the 241 tanks had not been cleaned within the previous six months. The gap became a larger public concern after bones were found inside a tank at the Asarwa Water Distribution Station. The tank’s last reported cleaning had taken place in January 2025.
Patel said cleaning schedules had been prepared separately for each tank. He stated that cleaning of 96 tanks had since been completed and that officials had again been instructed to ensure cleaning twice a year. He also called for the work to be monitored continuously.
The earlier figures showed significant differences between municipal zones. None of the 42 tanks in the eastern zone had been cleaned during the previous six months. Forty-one had been cleaned between six and 12 months earlier, while one had not been cleaned for more than a year.
In the north-west zone, nine of 36 tanks had been cleaned within six months, while the western zone had cleaned seven of its 40 tanks during that period. The south-west zone recorded the highest performance, with 26 of its 28 tanks cleaned within six months.
The 21 tanks that had gone more than a year without cleaning included seven in the north-west zone, six in the western zone, six in the northern zone, one in the eastern zone and one in the southern zone. The figures place the committee’s instruction within a broader administrative challenge: ensuring that a scheduled maintenance requirement is completed consistently across all municipal zones rather than only being recorded as a policy.
The corporation’s next stated steps are to follow the separate cleaning schedules for all tanks, complete the pending work and maintain continuous monitoring of compliance.
