Thane's notorious water scarcity crisis might be on its way to becoming even worse with the Thane Municipal Council announcing that the first phase of its proposed water supply project is running behind schedule by a month. The civic body missed the March 31 deadline and it was expected that the authorities would meet the April 15 deadline. Now the masses and their representatives will have to wait till May 12 to see if the revised deadline is met or not. Till then, Thane citizens have no choice but to suffer the water scarcity. "The first phase of the 110 Million Litres per Day (MLD) water supply project is likely to complete sometime between May 10 and 12," Nandkumar Jantre, civic commissioner said when he was asked about the progress of the project by Vilas Samant, the leader of the TMC House. The municipal commissioner however did not give reasons as to what caused the delay. He was then called upon to make his position clear to the masses through the media in the wake of the fact that the masses were highly suspicious about the seriousness of their elected representatives in solving the water crises through the corporation. The project, due to come up on Bhatsa river in the district, was undertaken late last year. When the project had gotten underway, the city began to experience acute water shortage due to state imposed water cuts. Several high rise areas in the city as well as the suburbs of Mumbra, Kausa and Diva went already without water. The authorities then impressed the fact upon the masses and the 116 corporators that it was to start the first phase of the proposed 110 MLD project by the end of March. The proposal to supply around 40 MLD of water to the city in the first phase was to officially complete by April 15, but the authorities claimed that they were speeding up with the project to ensure that it completed 15 days before schedule.