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Same story: Waterlogging exposes MCD again

Staff Reporter

Delhiites left stranded during the morning rush hour

REALITY BITES: The scene at ITO crossing after it poured in Delhi on Wednesday morning. Photo: Sandeep Saxena

NEW DELHI: The rainy season's second heavy downpour in the Capital on Wednesday exposed all over again the tall claims of various civic agencies as a vast majority of Delhiites were left stranded on waterlogged roads across the city during the morning rush hour.

With the city receiving around 75 mm of rainfall during the day, the Control Room of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi was flooded with emergency calls. Well over 200 complaints of waterlogging were received from 50 different localities, with the South, City, Civil Lines, Karol Bagh and Shahdara-North zones being the worst affected.

Office-goers and schoolchildren were caught in long traffic jams at many places including the busy ITO Crossing, Vikas Marg, Mathura Road, Old Delhi, Model Town, Shahdara, Karol Bagh, Jhandewalan, Pitampura and stretches of Ring Road and Outer Ring Road.

A blocked underground drain pipe near ITO resulted in the entire area being submerged for almost five hours causing massive traffic snarls on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Mathura Road and Vikas Marg. This in turn had a cascading effect on nearby areas such as Connaught Place, Delhi Gate, Laxmi Nagar and Ring Road.

"All of the busy ITO area was submerged in knee-deep water. As a result, traffic on the ITO Bridge came to a standstill. Vehicles on Vikas Marg moving towards Connaught Place were diverted to the Nizamuddin bridge. I got stuck in the traffic for more than an hour," complained Vipul Kumar, an executive working in Connaught Place.

Massive traffic jams were reported at Palam T-point on National Highway-8, Panchsheel Enclave near IIT and Panchkuian Road where people had to wade through waterlogged roads.

All these places witnessed traffic jams lasting one to two hours. Many stretches on Ring Road and Outer Ring Road were also severely affected by waterlogging.

While the heavy downpour exposed the so-called "preparedness" of the civic agencies, they in turn blamed each other for the sorry state of affairs.

The MCD authorities claimed that they were almost through with de-silting of 1,296 drains and blamed the Public Works Department for the waterlogging due to its choked drains.

On the other hand, the PWD authorities accused the civic body of indulging in a "blame game", stating that it was the civic body that had failed to do its job properly.

"So far it has managed to remove only around 4lakh metric tonnes of silt, while at least 9lakh tonnes should have been removed by now," charged a senior PWD official.

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