Onlykashmir.in News Desk
A severe drinking water crisis has gripped several localities of Srinagar for over a week, with residents across both downtown and uptown areas describing mounting hardship as soaring temperatures compound an already fragile supply situation. Families in Habba Kadal, Karfali Mohalla, Chotta Bazar, Guru Bazar, Qamarwari, Karan Nagar, Batmaloo, Hawal, Islamia College Gowjwara and Natipora say they have been forced to depend on private sources, neighbours and purchased water to meet even basic household needs.
Residents described hours spent daily arranging water in the scorching heat, with several noting that they continue to pay regular water bills despite receiving little to no supply through their tap connections. In Faizabad Colony, Natipora, households with young children and elderly members said the shortage has made daily life especially difficult, while residents of Batmaloo said repeated complaints to the concerned department have failed to yield a lasting fix. When contacted, the Executive Engineer of the PHE Division Srinagar described the disruption as localised and said it would be resolved shortly, but did not offer a specific reason for the prolonged outage or a firm restoration timeline.
Commissioner Secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department, Mandeep Kaur, said Srinagar’s water woes stem from two distinct but related problems: the availability of drinking water itself, and how that water is used once it reaches the system. She pointed out that the city lacks a separate infrastructure for irrigation, meaning lawns, gardens and potable supply all draw from the same network, an arrangement she said does not exist in many other cities with dedicated irrigation systems.
Citing a recent assessment, Kaur said close to 40 percent of Srinagar’s water supply is consumed by lawns and gardens without any corresponding payment, a category officials describe as non-revenue water. She said government resources remain limited, making responsible water use and greater citizen contribution essential going forward. To address the imbalance, the administration is working on reusing treated water from Sewage Treatment Plants for irrigation and commercial purposes, with plans to eventually discontinue potable connections wherever treated water can substitute, a practice she said is already standard in several other cities.
Kaur added that tanker-based supply is being ensured in areas where shortages have been reported, and that a broader rationalisation of the water supply system is under way. For residents enduring a second week without reliable water in peak summer heat, however, the more immediate concern remains how quickly relief measures translate into water actually reaching their homes, rather than long-term policy fixes still being worked out at the administrative level.
