Nagpur Municipal Commissioner Dr Vipin Itankar on Saturday, October 24, ordered officials to inspect every vehicle-washing centre and swimming pool in the city at once. If you hose down a car, water a garden, wash a road or cure a construction site with drinking water, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) says you can be fined up to Rs 5,000 for each instance, according to The Live Nagpur and the Marathi daily Tarun Bharat. Itankar gave the order at an emergency meeting with his additional commissioners, the chief engineer, zonal assistant commissioners and the private water operator OCW.
The trigger is storage. After a weak monsoon, the reservoirs that feed Nagpur hold about 58% of their capacity, both papers report.
Nagpur kept 740 MLD flowing and chose to chase leaks
Earlier this month the state told urban local bodies to cut supply by 10% (our report on the statewide order). Nagpur opted out. On October 17 The Hitavada reported that the NMC would keep pumping its usual 740 million litres a day from Totladoh reservoir and the Kanhan river instead of dropping 74 MLD. Executive engineer Shrikant Waikar told the paper the dams can meet current demand.
By the NMC’s figures in that report, roughly 259 MLD, about 35% of treated water, never earns revenue: leaking pipes, unmetered use and illegal taps swallow it. The corporation says leak repairs and regularising connections saved around 30 crore litres over six days. Nagpur is betting it can win back enough from leaks and theft to avoid rationing households, and the fines and inspections are how it plans to enforce that.
Car washes, pools and building sites face the first checks
Itankar named washing centres and pools as the first targets. Operators who use potable water heavily or wastefully face action. The NMC first floated the Rs 5,000 penalty at an October 13 review chaired by Mayor Neeta Thakre, where Nagpur Today described it as a proposal to be enforced by zonal assistant commissioners and the Nuisance Detection Squad. None of the reports we checked cite a notified order or a start date for the fine, so treat the figure as the ceiling the NMC has announced.
For homes, the practical line is narrow. Drinking water stays for drinking, cooking and washing. Car washing, garden watering, road cleaning and construction curing are the uses the NMC has singled out.
Illegal connection? Zonal office camps offer a way to regularise
The second order matters more if your household or building draws water through an unauthorised line. The NMC will hold camps at zonal offices where consumers can regularise connections, and it will fit meters at those points. Tarun Bharat reports that the drive will go ahead through the festive season. Anyone who tampers with or removes a meter faces a police complaint. On October 13 Nagpur Today put the target at about 8,000 illegal connections to be regularised within a month, with disconnection for those that are not.
Itankar also asked engineers to:
- repair pipeline leaks immediately;
- clean public wells, test the water in a laboratory and fit solar pumps with help from the Maharashtra Energy Development Agency, so car washes and gardens can use well water;
- set up decentralised sewage treatment plants whose treated water can go to gardens, road medians and construction;
- build recharge structures and revive wells and borewells with the Groundwater Surveys and Development Agency.
The reports give no timeline for the wells, treatment plants or recharge work. The inspections and connection camps start now, and residents and businesses will meet those first. Nagpur residents who lived through the 24-hour shutdown across 323 localities earlier this month (our report) will know how quickly supply can tighten. If the reservoirs fall further before the summer, the NMC has said nothing yet about rationing; Waikar told The Hitavada no cut is planned for now.
Sources: The Live Nagpur, Tarun Bharat, The Hitavada, Nagpur Today
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.