Even as the city witnessed a fair amount of rainfall on Thursday, state Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Ajit Pawar announced a 40 per cent water cut for the city from Saturday and a 20 per cent water cut in the Pimpri-Chinchwad areas from Friday. With the live storage in dams supplying water to the city reduced to two per cent, Pawar had convened a meeting in the city on Thursday.

The minister also issued orders to curb the canal water supply to the city, which will further reduce 175 cusecs of water supply to the city. To offset this, he has asked the corporation to make arrangements to provide water from Lashkar and Holkar.

Irrigation officials said these cuts would enable the PMC to store water till the month-end and the PCMC for 108 days.

Pawar said this was the first time the state was facing such a situation, where the live storage of water in all the dams had come down. “The live storage in the dams came down to 7 per cent from 13 per cent last year.”

Pawar also ordered the district collectors of Pune and Satara to direct irrigation officials to supply water only for drinking purpose and not for irrigation. The meeting was attended by principal secretary of water supply and sanitation Ajit Kumar Jain, MKVDC executive director Hanumant Kolawale, divisional commissioner Dilip Band, Mayors Rajlaxmi Bhosale and Aparna Doke, commissioners Mahesh Zagade and Ashish Kumar, superintending engineer of Pune irrigation division Avinash Surve and executive engineer Khadakwasla division Vijay Ghogare.

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