The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will spend an additional Rs 27.07 crore on the city's first underground water tank to prevent flooding in central Mumbai’s Hindmata area. Funds will be spent for construction of a water tank below Pramod Mahajan Park in Dadar west, officials said. To ensure Hindmata does not get flooded as it usually does during monsoon, the civic body had taken up construction of underground water tanks to store rainwater. Last year, the corporation started constructing two underground tanks at Pramod Mahajan Park in Dadar and St Xavier Ground in Parel. Along with this, a pumping station has been constructed in the space below the Hindmata flyover to push the water to both storage tanks through a newly-laid pipeline network using pumps. As per the proposal, the BMC did not invite a fresh tender for construction of a tank below Pramod Mahajan Park and awarded the contract to a contractor who was executing repair and construction work on stormwater drain outfall in Dadar and Dharavi. The stormwater drain outfall project has cost the civic body Rs 44.04 crore. Now, the BMC has decided to award a Rs 27.07-crore contract to the same contractor to finish the underground tank. This has now taken the project cost to Rs 71.12 crore. A proposal of additional expenditure for the water tank project will be tabled before the Standing Committee on Thursday. “The tank will have the capacity to store 1.5 crore litres of water and is connected to Hindmata through a 1,600 mm diameter stormwater drain line. This will help us eliminate flooding in the area,” said a BMC official. Similarly, another tank with storage capacity of 1 crore liters is being constructed at St Xavier Ground. Once high tides are over, the stored water will be pumped again to the pipelines and discharged into the sea via drains.