Mumbai: As much as 34% of the approximately 4,100 million litres per day (MLD) of water supplied to Mumbai is currently lost as non-revenue water (NRW) through leakage, theft and other distribution losses, according to BMC. NRW has been at 34% since 2024—an improvement from 38% between 2021 and 2023.Additional municipal commissioner Abhijit Bangar informed the civic standing committee on Thursday that the civic body needs to bring this figure down further by at least 10%, a target that may take time but could potentially make around 400 MLD of additional water available to the city.Bangar said recovering 400 MLD would be significant as it is roughly equivalent to the water yield expected from the proposed Gargai dam, which is planned to augment Mumbai’s water supply by 440 MLD in the coming years.One way of reducing losses, Bangar said, is to regularise unauthorised connections in areas where water supply can legally be provided. “BMC has already provided 26,774 water connections under its Water for All initiative between June 2022 and Aug 2026. So instead of such water going down as NRW it is better that the BMC gains out of it,” he said, adding that a tanker policy is also in the pipeline to be brought out shortly, which will ensure that tankers which largely supply water to establishments like Mumbai’s five-star hotels do not suck out of the civic water system and use wells only. “This will be a foolproof OTP-based system that will be presented to the civic standing committee by the coming weeks,” said Bangar.Further, deputy municipal chief Purushottam Malvade also said NRW does not entirely mean the water is going to waste. “While around 6-7% of this water is going towards leakages, there is also a large percentage going towards theft or faulty metering. This means that the water is being used, but then the BMC is not receiving anything out of this which is unfair,” he said.Each day, BMC picks up around 4,600 MLD of water from the seven lakes, of which 4,100 MLD is supplied to the city. Officials said as this water is brought from a far-off distance, the unofficial sucking out of some quantum of this water through motor pumps cannot be ignored.The scale of the problem is also reflected in the civic complaint data, which was presented at the meeting. Between Jan and Aug 2026, BMC received 17,906 complaints related to water-meter leakages. It also received 4,090 complaints concerning unauthorised water connections. Of these, 3,802 connections were disconnected, while 282 were regularised.
