top of page
Search

Sewer and Storm Water Drain Rules in Vidarbha and Why They Are Ignored

Storm water drain construction work on a municipal road
Sewer and storm water drain construction work during road cutting on an Indian city street

Drain-line work is one of the most disruptive forms of urban infrastructure construction because it requires cutting into roads and footpaths, excavating deep trenches, managing existing underground utilities, and then restoring the surface to a standard that can carry traffic again.


In Vidarbha, sewer lines and storm water drains are being expanded or repaired in multiple towns and cities, and the work often runs under the most used streets.

The rules for how this work must be planned, laid, tested, refilled, and reinstated are not informal practice notes. They sit across national technical manuals, Indian Standards, state schedules of rates, municipal law, and local development control rules. A clear paper trail exists for what is required, and a second paper trail shows repeated reminders from courts and highway authorities about public safety, restoration deadlines, and accountability. 


Technical rules that define how drain lines must be laid and who writes them


The guidance used in cities and towns in Vidarbha does not come from a single booklet. It is a layered system.


National technical manuals issued under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs lay out design and construction parameters for storm water systems, including how buried conduits and access structures are meant to be positioned and built.

This guidance includes plainly stated layout expectations, such as placing storm drains on both sides of roads and linking them with cross-drains at intervals, including gratings to collect runoff from the road surface. 


A second layer is the set of Indian Standards issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards. For practical sewer and drain installation, the code on glazed stoneware drainage pipes describes the trench as needing to be dug so pipes can be laid to the required alignment and depth, with a recommended minimum cover of 90 cm under roadways. It also specifies how trench width is to be calculated at the bottom, tying it to pipe diameter and excavation depth, and it requires the trench to be shored and drained so workers can work safely. 


That same standard goes beyond excavation and gives measurable requirements for jointing, testing, and backfilling. It describes cement mortar jointing, curing before testing, and hydraulic test pressures. It also states that trench filling must not begin until the laid length has been tested and passed. Backfill is divided into zones, with specified methods and layer thicknesses, including hand backfilling with compacted layers in the zone around the pipe. The standard also records that disturbed pavements and property must be restored after completion, and it even includes guidance on avoiding depressions over pipes by leaving refilled trenches slightly proud because settlement is expected. 


Storm water drainage manuals provide comparable specificity for underground access points. They specify where manholes are needed, including changes in alignment, grade, and pipe size, and they provide maximum spacing guidance by pipe diameter. The same manual sets construction expectations, such as the need to build manholes alongside the conduit line, foundation thickness norms, and even an observation period to check that ground water does not leak into the manhole after emptying it. 


In Vidarbha, a third layer matters because many sewerage projects are executed under state water and sanitation structures and procurement norms rather than only municipal engineering departments.


The Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran schedule of rates used for water supply and sewerage works includes contract-facing conditions that strongly influence how lines are laid and tested on the ground.


It records that refilling before hydraulic testing may be necessary to avoid traffic hurdles, but it also states that payment for refilling of pipeline trenches is not payable until satisfactory hydraulic testing has been given, and it places testing-linked retention on pipeline subworks. It also sets staged payment terms when pipes are supplied by a contractor, linking final payment to successful hydraulic testing and tender conditions. 


Local development control rules add a building-level layer. For Nagpur, the development control regulations state that planning, design, construction and installation of water supply, drainage and sanitation in buildings must follow the city’s water supply and drainage rules and the relevant part of the national building code on drainage and sanitation.


The same regulations also refer to rainwater pipe connections to storm water drains or sewers through covered channels under footpaths when required by the authority. This connects plot-level drain lines and roof connections into the city network and shows that drain-line rules do not start only at the main road. 


How enforcement is meant to work in law, in contracts, and at the worksite

Enforcement of drain-line laying rules in Maharashtra is meant to happen through three overlapping mechanisms. The first is municipal law, which creates powers and duties that cover street opening, safety during excavation, and restoration. The Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Law gives the basis for controlling drains as a public system and controlling how private connections interface with it.


It states that where separate municipal drains exist for foul water and surface water, owners are not entitled to discharge foul water into surface water drains and also cannot discharge surface water into foul drains without permission. It also gives the municipal commissioner power to require a proposed drain to be constructed differently than the builder’s plan, including specifying material, pipe size, depth, fall, direction, or outfall, when it is needed to form part of the general drainage system. 


Street excavation and reinstatement are also detailed, including situations directly created by sewer-line trenching. The same law states that when a street is opened or broken up for municipal purposes, the work must be completed and the soil or pavement filled in, reinstated and made good with all convenient speed, and excavated surplus and rubbish must be removed without delay.

It requires fencing and guarding of open places, and it requires sufficient lighting at night for warning road users while works remain open. It then extends these obligations to non-municipal actors through the permissions regime, requiring written permission to open or break up streets and requiring anyone granted permission to fence, guard, and light works at night where needed to prevent accidents.


It also states that persons who open streets must reinstate them to the satisfaction of the commissioner, and if they fail, the commissioner may restore the street and recover the expenses. 


The second enforcement mechanism is contract discipline, which is where state schedules of rates and tender conditions translate technical manuals into measurable deliverables. Testing-linked retention is a direct example. The state schedule-of-rates notes tie part of the payment and retention to hydraulic testing and require the contractor to bear the cost of re-excavation if defects appear during testing.


These clauses are intended to connect quality and watertightness performance to money and to delay the financial closure of trench backfill and surface restoration until the buried line has passed test requirements. 


Highway enforcement is a third mechanism, relevant where sewerage lines cross or run along national highways in Vidarbha towns. The highways ministry utility-laying conditions include specific trenching and reinstatement requirements such as limiting trench width, specifying bedding thickness, requiring staged side-fill and overfill, requiring layer-by-layer compaction with density targets, and requiring the road crust to be rebuilt to the same strength as the existing crust.


These conditions also require proper filling and compaction to restore the land to its prior condition and include bank guarantee provisions as security against improper restoration and related damage or interruption. 


Court directions create an additional enforcement layer because they set expectations for what authorities must demand before giving digging permissions and what must happen at sites where road surfaces are compromised.


A Maharashtra-wide order in a long-running public interest case directed municipal bodies to keep roads properly levelled and surfaced, and it required that when permissions for digging work are granted, a condition must be incorporated requiring prominent display boards at the site. The order specifies that the boards display the agency doing the digging, the extent of permitted digging, the period for completion, and “the outer limit within which the road shall be restored to its original condition.” The same order also directed systems for citizen complaints and tracking of action taken, including the use of photographs. 


Why do these rules go unfollowed in Vidarbha?


Evidence from recent local reporting and official records points to a recurring pattern. The written rules are detailed, but compliance breaks at the same predictable points.


The problems are visible in deep trench corridors where sewer lines are laid, in storm drain networks where fluids and debris should move freely, and in the surface reinstatement that follows trenching.

One consistent failure mode is poor coordination between multiple utilities working on the same road space and at different times. In a recent overflow incident on a major road corridor, the city sanitation administration’s preliminary assessment recorded damage to sewer lines during electric cable installation, which led to backflow.


The same record noted repeated infrastructure damage being linked to poor coordination among agencies. This kind of interference is precisely the risk described in municipal law provisions that require traffic management and continuity of drainage and lighting during street works. 


Another repeated break occurs at the point where excavation becomes a public hazard, especially when pits and chambers remain unprotected, and surfaces are not levelled after chamber construction.


In a 2024 report on sewer line chamber works in an urban fringe area, the problem described was not the existence of the sewage scheme but the condition of the roads after chamber work, with dug-up patches and a lack of proper restoration once chamber work was completed.


Separate reporting has also described open or missing covers as a persistent risk during monsoon conditions because hazards become hard to spot under pooled water. These are direct breaches of the duty to fence, guard, and light open excavations and of the requirement to reinstate streets without delay. 


The form of non-compliance sometimes shifts from negligence to misuse. In a documented sewage overflow near key transport infrastructure, an allegation recorded in the report linked the crisis to illegal sewer connections into the storm water drain system.


This kind of cross-connection is the same conduct prohibited in municipal corporations law, where separate foul and surface drains exist, and foul water is not permitted into surface drains. The incident description also shows how a storm system designed under one set of velocities, gradients, and inlet assumptions can be compromised when sewage is introduced, because sewage brings different solids, greases, and gas formation potential. 


A further break point is in quality assurance and maintenance readiness, which is where “completion” becomes a paperwork milestone rather than a monitored standard. A storm drainage operations manual lists systemic reasons for poor operation and maintenance, including lack of finance, overlapping responsibilities across agencies, inadequate training, and lack of reliable manuals and information systems.


When responsibilities overlap, enforcement weakens because it becomes unclear which agency must act on defects such as inadequate inclination, pipe displacement, silt entry, and road subsidence. Those faults are listed as inspection findings in the same manual, meaning they are known failure forms that require monitoring and correction. 

The public health breakdown in a neighbourhood water contamination episode shows how quickly these failures can turn into illness when pipelines are damaged or when work sites allow sewage ingress into potable networks. Residents described yellowish tap water with a strong foul odour preceding sickness, and a treating physician cited symptoms consistent with hepatitis A commonly linked to contaminated water.


The record notes that pipeline work was underway in dug-up lanes at the time. This is the drain-line story at its sharpest edge because it ties trenching and pipeline intervention directly to contamination risk when separation and protection between systems fail. 


Consequences recorded in infrastructure damage, public safety incidents, and sewage pollution


The consequences of non-compliance are documented at three scales in Vidarbha’s cities. The smallest scale is the individual worksite, where holes, chambers, and broken covers become immediate hazards.


The middle scale is the neighbourhood, where sewage intrusion or line damage triggers overflow or water contamination. The largest scale is the receiving environment, where untreated sewage enters drains and rivers when networks leak, cross-connect, or terminate in underperforming treatment systems.


Public safety consequences are evident in the way courts have discussed open manholes and broken road surfaces over the years.

One court record highlighted that red flags and stones used as safeguards may not be visible at night and recorded a stretch where hundreds of covers were found damaged or missing, requiring replacement and interim safeguards.


Even though this record is not limited to one city, it provides the enforcement context: open manholes are treated as a recurring hazard class, and insufficient warnings are recorded as leading to accidents. 


A parallel chain is visible in city-level reporting about broken or missing covers and the scale of replacement required. In a recent hearing-related report, the civic administration contested the number of broken covers but still reported replacing thousands of covers in a year and receiving hundreds of complaints through a municipal app. The persistence of this dispute is itself a consequence because it shows the scale of inspection and replacement cycles needed when surface fittings fail or are damaged during ongoing construction. 


The infrastructure and mobility consequences are also tied to restoration delays. A record of penalties shows that contractors were fined for failing to restore roads dug up for sewer line installation across large stretches, with the immediate risk described as monsoon-linked road conditions and waterlogging where surfaces remain uneven. This links to the highway and municipal-law rule sets that treat restoration, compaction, and debris clearance as obligations, not optional finishing work. 


Public health consequences extend beyond single-household illness when the separation between systems fails during line work. The reported contamination episode recorded dozens falling ill after consuming contaminated tap water, with household accounts of hospitalisation and high medical costs.


The report describes how residents associated illness with the period when the streets were dug for pipeline work and water quality changed. It also records official confirmation of complaints and field survey initiation, and a medical diagnosis pattern consistent with waterborne infection. 


Environmental and water-body consequences are visible where sewer networks do not adequately collect and convey sewage to functioning treatment. A recent report on sewage treatment performance stated that a majority of sewage treatment plants in the city were defunct, allowing untreated waste to enter the local river and contaminate downstream water bodies.


The same record included figures for daily sewage generation and the mismatch between generation and treatment. While treatment plant operation is not trench-laying itself, the pipe network is the collection backbone, and failures in construction quality, leakage control, illegal connection management, and maintenance add to the load and bypass pathways that result in untreated discharge. 


The same kind of consequence is seen in a lake contamination matter where the pollution regulator described the water as unfit even for bathing, and where an admitted cause was a faulty sewer line requiring diversion.


This ties back to the technical requirements on watertightness, testing, and defect rectification. It shows how one defective stretch can function as a continuous inflow point into a water body. 


Engineering consequences also appear as a list of observable defects in the storm drainage operations manual. It lists inadequate inclination, pipe displacement, earth and mortar ingress, and road subsidence as inspection findings for pipes and lateral drains.

These are not abstract risks. They are the concrete forms of failure that appear when trench bedding is inadequate, compaction is weak, joints leak, or alignment and grade are not held during laying and backfilling. 


The record is consistent across manuals, law, and observed failures. Drain line rules already define what must be done, including separation between foul and surface systems, test-before-backfill discipline, layered compaction, restoration deadlines, and worksite safety controls.


The continuing documentation from courts, regulators, and city reporting shows that the central issue is not the absence of written standards, but the repeated appearance of the same non-compliance points during execution and follow-through.



References




Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet
Add a rating

About the Author

Pranay Arya is the founder and editor of The News Dirt, an independent journalism platform focused on ground-level reporting across Vidarbha. He has authored 800+ research-based articles covering public issues, regional history, infrastructure, governance, and socio-economic developments, building one of the region’s most extensive digital knowledge archives.

bottom of page