In India, the demand for water is continuously increasing due to the growing population. Approximately 16.5% of all country’s electricity used to pump this water is from fossil fuels leading to increased pump Life Cycle Cost(LCC) and Green House Gas(GHG) emissions. With the recent advancement in power electronics and drives, renewables like solar photovoltaic and wind energy are becoming readily available for water pumping applications resulting in the reduction of GHG emissions. Recently, research towards AC motor based Water Pumping Systems(WPS) has received a great emphasis owing to its numerous merits. Further, considering the tremendous acceptance of renewable sources, especially solar and wind, this paper provides a detailed review of single-stage and multi-stage WPS consisting of renewable source powered AC motors. The critical review is performed based on the following figure of merits, including the type of motor, power electronics interface and associated control strategies. Also, to add to the reliability of solar PV WPS, hybrid Wind-PV WPS will be discussed in detail. Readers will be presented with the state-of-the-art technology and research directions in Renewable Energy-based WPS(REWPS) to improve the overall system efficiency and hence reduce the payback period.