Nagaland Spent Rs 27.97 Crore Building A Water Pipeline For Kohima. Ten Years Later, It Remains Uncommissioned Because Nobody Secured The Water Source First.

The Kohima Town Water Supply Augmentation Project launched in 2012 with an ADB loan and a promise: 31 million litres of daily relief for a city running at 82 to 93 percent below demand. M/s Tantia Constructions Limited, Kolkata, built 212 km of pipelines for Rs 27.97 crore and called it done in March 2022 — seven years past the original deadline. There was one oversight: the bulk water source at the Dzukou and Tepuiki streams was never secured, held up by a land dispute between two adjacent villages that nobody resolved before the pipes were laid. The CAG tabled its findings in the Nagaland Legislature on March 26, 2026, noting the distribution network was never tested, never commissioned, and the defect liability period expired quietly in March 2023. Kohima still runs on a few hours of water every few days.