Mumbai water woes: Aaditya scrapped dam projects for costly desalination plants, says Shelar

Mumbai BJP chief Ashish Shelar on Friday blamed Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray for water woes in the metropolis and alleged the latter scrapped several planned dam projects in favour of expensive desalination plants.

Thackeray was environment minister in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government headed by his father Uddhav Thackeray. Shelar, who has corporator in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation for several terms before becoming an MLA, said many parts of the city face low water pressure.

"In the last 10 years no new dam was constructed by the civic body nor was any new arrangement made. On the contrary, the Gargai Dam project was scrapped and a plan to desalinate sea water was initiated. However, even the desalination project could not see completion," Shelar said.


Notably, the undivided Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray controlled the BMC for 25 consecutive years between 1997 to 2022. Shelar's BJP was also an alliance partner of the Sena for a significant period of time.

In the 1990s, a committee led by Madhavrao Chitale proposed building of three new dams for Mumbai, namely Gargai, Pinjal and Middle Vaitarna, Shelar said. The Middle Vaitarna was completed in 2014 but since then no new project was taken up, he pointed out.

He said work on planning permissions for Gargai Dam began but the project was scrapped when Thackeray was state environment minister.

In order to benefit contractors, an expensive desalination plant project was undertaken at a cost of Rs 4,400 crore, which later escalated to Rs 8,000 crore, the BJP leader alleged.