Thane got through one Wednesday of its new weekly water cut before the civic body changed the day. From Monday, November 2, the 10 per cent reduction ordered by the state will be taken as a Monday shutdown across the Thane Municipal Corporation area, a decision taken at an October 28 meeting chaired by commissioner Saurabh Rao with the managing director of STEM Water Company, Saam TV reported. The first Wednesday shutdown ran from 9 am on October 28 to 9 am on October 29, according to the Free Press Journal, and there will be no Wednesday cut next week.
The corporation has not published hours for the Monday version. The Wednesday one was a 24-hour window, and the Saam TV and Daily Jagran reports describe the Monday cut as the same shutdown moved to a new day, so a 9 am Monday to 9 am Tuesday pattern is the reasonable assumption until the TMC says otherwise.
Why the TMC dropped Wednesday after one week
Neither report quotes a reason for the day itself, but the timing suggests one. A Wednesday shutdown lands in the middle of the working week, when housing societies have no slack to refill tanks, and it collided this week with the separate 36-hour MIDC outage in Diva, Mumbra and Kalwa that began on October 22. A Monday cut lets societies top up over the weekend and gives the network until Tuesday morning to settle. The meeting also brought STEM, which supplies a large part of Thane from the Bhatsa system, and the TMC’s own scheme onto one calendar. Both supplies will now pause together.
The 10 per cent figure is not Thane’s choice. It comes from the state resolution that we reported on October 9, which told every urban body to stretch reservoir stocks until August 31, 2027, after a poor monsoon and the prospect of El Nino conditions. Pune took its cut as a Thursday shutdown; Thane has now settled on Monday.
The areas that go dry on Mondays
The list carried by Saam TV and Daily Jagran covers the STEM and TMC-fed belt, which is most of the city outside the old core:
- Ghodbunder Road and the townships along it, including Rustomjee, Siddhanchal, Eternity and Johnson
- The Pokhran Road and Vartak Nagar side: Lokmanya Nagar, Vartak Nagar, Saket, Rutu Park, Jail, Gandhinagar and Indiranagar
- Shreenagar, Samata Nagar, Rupadevi and Siddheshwar
- Mumbra and parts of Kalwa
Kopri, Louiswadi, Jambli Naka and the station-side old city draw from the BMC’s Pise-Panjrapur line and are outside this shutdown, though those areas are under a separate seven-day boil-water advisory this week. Diva and the MIDC-fed parts of Kalwa and Mumbra answer to MIDC’s own cut schedule, not to this one.
Car washes shut, pressure jets banned
The corporation issued a second order the same week. Service centres across Thane have been told to stop washing two-, three- and four-wheelers, using drinking, borewell or well water, and pressure jets are banned, Saamana reported. A bucket and a wet cloth remain allowed, per the Free Press Journal. The water supply department says stations that keep washing face action. Nagpur went down the same path last week with fines of up to Rs 5,000, so Thane may follow with a fine schedule once the notices have been served.
For households, the change comes down to three habits: fill tanks on Sunday rather than Tuesday, expect low pressure through Tuesday morning after each cut, and treat the Monday as fixed until at least the end of the summer. The state’s horizon is August 2027, and nothing in either corporation’s statements suggests the cut will ease before the next monsoon is in.
Sources: Saam TV, Daily Jagran, Free Press Journal, Saamana
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.