Nagpur: As many as 11,000 commercial users and institutions, including Indian Railways, airport and restaurants, are facing threat of disconnection of their water supply. The Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA) has objected to Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) supplying water to such commercial establishments across municipal limits.
NMC is also supplying water to industries, said MWRRA member (law) advocate Vinod Tiwari, who advised the civic body to revive its existing water bodies in the city to meet its commercial demands.
As per MWRRA condition, NMC is drawing water from two sources — Navegaon Khairi and Kanhan — for domestic purposes, while it is also providing water to commercial consumers. Following an objection by MLA Ashish Jaiswal, MWRRA has asked NMC to stop supplying water to commercial establishments in city limits, as it violates the conditions under which water was being supplied.
A senior official from NMC’s water works department confirmed this and said MWRRA recently asked NMC to stop supply to all commercial establishments, including Indian Railways, airport, hotels, restaurants and educational institutions.
The meeting was attended by member water resources engineering SD Kulkarni, Tiwari, MLA Ashish Jaiswal, NMC’s water works department superintending engineer Shweta Banerjee, and executive engineer M Ganvir among others.
According to information obtained from NMC’s water works department, NMC was supplying potable water to around 3.73 lakh consumers. This includes 10,988 commercial consumers, including 5,982 institutional connections and 5,006 pure commercial connections.
NMC levies Rs8.15 per unit water from domestic consumers, while for institutional and commercial consumers, the rate varies from Rs21.17 to Rs97.74 per unit.
Though it is supplying water by levying different charges for both residential and commercial consumers, it is depositing almost fixed charges for raw water. Jaiswal pointed out that NMC is not depositing different charges to MWRRA.
For lifting water from Navegaon Khairi, NMC is paying around Rs74 lakh per month to the irrigation department, while for pumping Kanhan river water it is paying Rs18 lakh per month. Besides this, NMC is spending almost Rs5.74 crore per month towards electricity charges for uninterrupted power supply to its different water pumping stations.
In a hearing by MWRRA, Jaiswal pointed out that the civic body is getting water from Navegaon reservoir, which was actually meant for irrigation purposes. He also contended that despite clear instructions to create its own water resources, the civic body did nothing in this regard.
He pointed out that in 1998, the irrigation department had agreed to provide 78 million cubic meter water on conditional arrangement that NMC would develop its own reservoir. Now, farmers are being deprived of their rights, Jaiswal pointed out and demanded that NMC should submit month-wise demand and supply data.
With no month-wise planning, NMC exhausts entire water allocation, and is taking no efforts to legalize the 50,000 illegal water connections, it was pointed out during the meeting. Its demand has risen from 78 MCM in 1998 to 173.5MCM today.
“NMC will submit its reply after it receives minutes of the meeting,” said a senior NMC official.
Water going down the drain!
Over an year later, the civic body is yet to plug leakage in 2300mm pipeline of Pench, which is supplying water to the city. As a result, thousands of litres of water is being wasted. Water supply and standing committee chairman Vijay Zalke on Thursday visited the site and expressed anguish over lethargic attitude of the water works department to plug the leakage. He directed them to undertake the repair work immediately.