The Mumbai Water Tanker Association (MWTA) called off its indefinite strike, which began on April 10, on Monday afternoon following a meeting with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani at his official residence in Malabar Hill.
The MWTA’s announcement came a day after the BMC invoked the Disaster Management Act, 2005, which empowered the civic body to requisition all the private water tankers and borewells in Mumbai. Civic officials said that while the administration assured support for the MWTA’s demands, the body was also warned sternly against continuing the strike.
Owing to the strike, Mumbai has been reeling under a water crisis for more than three days as the city’s informal settlements as well as the commercial and industrial sectors are heavily dependent on tanker water supply for their daily requirements. The strike also halted multiple infrastructure projects, including the BMC’s mega road concretisation project.
Speaking to The Indian Express on Monday, MWTA spokesperson Ankur Sharma said, “The state government has agreed to represent our demands to the Union ministry with regard to the guidelines drafted by the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA). All the cases that were registered against us by the BMC have also been withdrawn. Therefore, we decided to call off the strike.”
On Sunday, Gagrani had told The Indian Express that legal action would be taken against private borewell and tanker owners who refuse to abide by the requisition order.
The MWTA called the strike after the BMC issued multiple notices to the owners of ring wells and borewells in Mumbai last month, asking them to either shut their facility or obtain an operational No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from the Union ministry’s CGWA for maintaining the wells. The notices also mandated the owners to apply for fresh license from the CGWA in order to qualify as water supplying agencies.
According to the CGWA guidelines, a licence would be issued to a well-owner only if the well is situated on a land parcel having a minimum size of 200 square metres. Besides, the guideline also limits the number of tankers that can fill water from a well to a single tanker. The new guidelines also mandate that every well operator needs to set up a flow meter to record the flow of water.
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Meanwhile, MWTA members stated that these rules are not fit for a city like Mumbai which is severely congested and it is impossible for owners to have an available land parcel of 200 square metres where they can operate wells. As a result, MWTA demanded amendment of the CGWA guidelines and sought the withdrawal of the BMC’s notices.
Following this, the association went on strike from April 10. The BMC, on April 11, announced that they will be extending the deadline to acquire CGWA licence to June 15, but the MWTA stated that they will not withdraw the strike unless the CGWA rules are amended and the notices issued to well owners are withdrawn.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis directed Gagrani to resolve the crisis at the earliest, following which the civic chief announced the imposition of the Disaster Management Act on April 14.
At present, the MWTA has 2,000 tankers registered with it and they supply water between 200 to 2,000 million litres per day (MLD) depending on the demand. For daily usage, the BMC supplies 3,850 MLD water against a demand of 4,200 MLD. As a result, the tankers continue to be the second most important source of water in Mumbai as well as the primary source in the informal settlements that comprise more than 50 per cent of Mumbai’s population.
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