Mumbaikars rejoice, BMC may withdraw water cuts next week

With heavy rains lashing the city over the last two weeks, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is reportedly contemplating over discontinuing the 20 percent water cuts imposed in the city.

According to a BMC official, the catchment areas supplying water to Mumbai have enough water to last till the end of this year already. As per official figures, the seven lakes in total have around 6.6 lakh million litres of as of Thursday, twice of what was recorded last year.

With an estimated daily requirement of 3,750 million litres of water per day, the civic body needs to ensure the lakes have at least 14 lakh million litres of water in stock to last an entire year.

However, owing to a bad monsoon last year, the civic body was forced to impose a 20 percent water cut for residential areas from August 2015 to ensure the water supply lasts till the onset of this monsoon.

Since the city has witnessed a favorable monsoon till now, BMC officials are contemplating on withdrawing the water cut. “This year’s monsoon has been very good so far. There is a meeting scheduled next week during which we will take a call on withdrawing the water cuts,” said an official.

“If the water cuts are removed, then we will do it stagewise wherein residential areas will be given priority over commercial ones,” he added.

While the official is hopeful that the water cuts are likely to be called off, there is certain skepticism among senior officials due to the unpredictability of monsoon. Another worrying factor is that once the cut has been withdrawn, civic officials may receive flak from citizens if they are forced to impose them again in the near future.