Mumbai: Even as politicians are busy criticizing Ajit Pawar’s jeering comment on drought, water stocks in all the dams in Marathwada touched the lowest level ever on Tuesday. Going by the information released by the water resources department on Tuesday, stock in all the dams in the entire Marathwada region stood at 8% of the total count, compared to 18% the same day last year and 42% the year before that. “All have condemned Ajit Pawar’s statement and he has tendered an unconditional apology. The Opposition must continue the agitation against him, but at the same time, they should ensure that adequate steps are taken to tackle the acute water shortage,” a senior Congress minister said. A senior bureaucrat admitted that the situation was dire in Marathwada, especially the four districts of Beed, Jalna, Osmanabad and Aurangabad. He added that the government’s failure to provide water there by early May might lead to migration to Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The other parts of the state is not faring any better. While all the dams in Maharashtra have total capacity of 7,573 million cubic metre water, the count was a mere 636 mcm on April 9. Konkan dams recorded 48% of total capacity, Nagpur 33%, Amravati 27%, Nashik 20% and Pune 28%. Till now, 3,562 tankers have been deployed to supply water to 10,000 villages, mostly in the four Marathwada districts and two districts in western Maharashtra. The bureaucrat said, “Small and medium dams have been witnessing steady depletion in water level, but the crisis has extended to even big dams now.” Notice to water plants T he state has issued notices to 10 mineral water firms and bottling plants that were supplying bottled water without being registered with the Food and Drug Administration. Revealing this in a written reply to a query in the legislature, water supply and sanitation minister Laxman Dhoble said the state has 23 bottling plants, of which 13 are registered. TNN Fill Ujjani dam in 24 hrs: HC to Maha Mumbai: Barely two days ago, Maharashtra deputy CM Ajit Pawar had made a remark about urinating into the “dry’’ Ujjani dam that caters to drought-hit parts of Solapur district but now, the Bombay high court has given Solapur residents a reason to smile. On Tuesday a bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice M S Sanklecha directed the state chief secretary to release water, within 24 hours, into the Ujjani Dam. The water level in the dam had gone into negative levels, but the state water resources department was not responding to farmers’ pleas, said a PIL that highlighted the state’s “complete inaction’’. The PIL said the dam was constructed in 1980 to provide water “all 12 months to Solapur’’, but the term was gradually reduced to eight months and then four to six months by “powerful politicians to divert water to their areas’’. The HC observed that despite directions, the state irrigation department had failed to file its affidavit on the PIL filed recently. The PIL was filed by a farmers’ body, Mohol Taluka Bahu-Udeshiya Shetkari Sangh, for equitable distribution of water, as provided by a special law, for Solapur. The HC on March 26 had said, “No further time will be granted (to the state for its reply) in view of the urgency involved in the matter.’’ Earlier on March 6, the HC had also directed a statutory body, the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority, to decide on the farmers’ grievance within 10 days. The farmers wanted the authority to release water into the Ujjani dam from 17 other upstream dams. Counsel for the farmers M A Chaudhari had pointed out the representations were already made to the authorities who failed to react and that the acute water scarcity had led to migration from Solapur. But later the authority’s counsel Harvinder Toor informed the court that the statutory body did not have a full-time chairperson since August 2011. Advocate V M Thorat appearing for intervenors in support of the PIL said that the state was depriving common people water in the largely drought-hit district. He said rainfall had reduced ten-fold last year and the dam whose construction had begun way back in 1969 and completed in 1980 was intended to curb famine not cause it.