Mumbai News: BMC Completes 18.05% Of Pre-Monsoon Desilting; 1.81 Lakh MT Silt Removed So Far Across Drains And Mithi River

Mumbai: In period of one month, the BMC has completed overall total 18.05% of pre-monsoon desilting of nullahs (drains), including eastern and western suburbs, city area and Mithi river and minor drains.

The civic body has to meet the deadline of May 31 to complete it's pre-monsoon desilting, with target of removing as much as 10.06 lakh metric tons (MT) silt from the major and minor drains of Mumbai. As of April 21, 1.81 lakh MT of silt has been removed.

The work is carried by the storm water drains (SWD) department, for which 23 contractors have been appointed and work commenced from March last week. The BMC has allocated the budget of Rs 540 crore for the period of two years.

For the coastal city like Mumbai, desilting of drains is the most crucial pre-monsoon activity undertaken by the BMC to allow rainwater to drain faster and prevent waterlogging as much as possible. Mumbai has total 283 major drains (including rivers), having total length of 274.56 kms. While, the city has total 1488 minor drains having total length of 637.305 kms. Mumbai also has 4211 roadside drains, with total length of 2181.4 kms.

As per data SWD department data, as of April 21, the highest desilting is done in eastern suburbs with 36.16% and 44.43 thousand MT silt removed, followed by 30.40% in western suburbs with 63.15 thousand MT silt removed and 20.34% in city area with 6 thousand MT silt removed. While, 13.69% of desilting of Mithi river is completed with 29.33 thousand MT of silt removed and 8.9% of desilting of minor drains is completed with 38.56 thousand MT of silt removed.

As per BMC, the removed silt is kept on the roadside for 48 hours to dry before loading.

Meanwhile, the citizens can track live data of desilting works carried across the city on BMC's official link : https://swd.mcgm.gov.in/wms2025

The link had been generated and daily silt removal is updated to increase transparency and accountability.

The BMC this year is tracking the data of the 22 km long Mithi River desilting particularly after the Rs 1000 crore scam against which enquiry by the economic offences wing is been conducted.

A senior officer from the SWD department said the contractors are mandated to upload videos and photos of the desilting activity. The data is been tracked using CCTV and Artificial Intelligence.

According to BMC's guidelines, desilting works are conducted in three phases, with 80% of the silt removed by the end of May i.e pre-monsoon, 10% is cleared during the monsoon and the remaining 10% is done post-monsoon.