Authorities’ tall claims go under water again as rain brings Delhi to its knees

The city was brought to its knees on Saturday by six hours of rainfall between 2.30am and 8.30am that threw traffic into disarray and inundated several key stretches and underpasses, exposing how badly the national capital needs a comprehensive drainage plan as well a meticulous plan to ensure that local drains are cleaned properly ahead of monsoon that are managed by a multitude of agencies across the city.

Saturday’s scenes --- people stuck in long traffic jams on roads that were turned into ponds -- were nothing new for its over 20 million residents.

The Minto Bridge, which is an annual pain point for the Capital, was finally flooded on Saturday despite the authorities putting in place a new drainage mechanism there which had kept it dry during the rains over the past couple of months. Authorities barricaded the road below the bridge, where a man drowned last year.

Nobody drowned anywhere on Saturday but a 60-year-old man in east Delhi died of electrocution.

Despite the state Public Works Departments (PWD) and Delhi’s three municipal agencies claiming they completed this season’s desilting process, commuters shared on social media photographs of water-logged roads and traffic.

Despite several roads and localities going under rainwater in south Delhi, SDMC mayor Mukesh Suryan compared scenes of water-logging in the city to Venice and blamed the Delhi government for the day’s events. The Delhi government did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In the last 24 hours, Delhi received 138mm rainfall – the highest 24-hour record for the month in the last 14 years.

BS Vohra, president, Federation of East Delhi RWAs, said that streets in parts of east Delhi were filled with at least two-feet-deep rainwater. “Every year whenever there is heavy rain, residents waded through the streets. There has been no solution for decades to this mess,” said Vohra.

Places such as Laxmi Nagar and Krishna Nagar in East Delhi were waterlogged almost throughout the day.

East Delhi mayor Shyam Sundar Agrawal said, “This is mainly because of the bigger drains under the Delhi government that have been choked for years. The stormwater drains are all choked, which even with the slightest rainfall overflow into the small drains inundating roads in residential colonies,” said Agrawal.

In many trans-Yamuna areas, water even reached the ground floor of houses.

Besides major roads, streets in residential areas too had knee-deep water making it difficult for residents to wade through the accumulated rainwater. This includes areas such as Munirka, Alaknanda, CR Park, Panchsheel Enclave, Saket, Jangpura, Kalkaji, Sukhdev Vihar, Lajpat Nagar, Govindpuri, Nizamuddin, Punjabi Bagh, Karol Bagh, Krishna Nagar, Patparganj, Laxmi Nagar, Preet Vihar, Sadar Bazar, Rohini Kamla Nagar,Vikapuri and Najafgarh, among others.

The massive waterlogging across the city also led to blame game over desilting of drains with the municipal corporations alleging that roads under the Delhi government’s PWD were affected.

“All the arterial roads and underpasses are with the PWD, which has completely failed to curb the problem. The waterlogging in residential areas too is a result of overflowing storm water drains under the PWD, which flood the smaller drain that fall under the corporations thus inundating colony roads,” said Suryan.

The Delhi government did not respond to requests for comment.

Delhi’s three civic agencies are run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while PWD comes under the Delhi government run by the Aam Aadmi Party.

Last month, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said that his government will redesign the city’s drainage system to provide a lasting solution to the annual problem of flooding on roads.

By 7.30am the Delhi traffic police had placed barricades on the road below the Minto bridge. It was the first time this season that the road was blocked.

The traffic police set in place diversions which confused most commuters. The barricades were removed only after 10am. The Delhi Traffic Police tweeted an alert at around 7:30 am that read, “Traffic movement on Minto Bridge (both carriageway) has been closed due to water logging. Please avoid stretch.”

Explaining why the Minto underpass was waterlogged again, a senior PWD official said even though it rained through the night, the situation at Minto bridge underpass was normal until 7am when the water level suddenly started to rise and eventually there was slight waterlogging in the underpass area. This happened when the water from the Delhi Jal Board line started overflowing and the excess water started accumulating on the road.

“The line carries both rainwater and sewerage and the sewerage increases in the morning as people start using the water in their homes. This is an automatic process and happens every day just that it rained heavily today and could not be averted. This choked the line and led to an overflow. However, PWD had stationed three suction pumps in the area, which helped us to immediately clear the stretch for traffic,” said a PWD official.

The official said that the depth of water under the Minto Bridge, went up to around 350mm but subsiding eventually. Earlier this year, the PWD laid a new pipeline for pressurised flow. Last year, a 56-year-old man died at Minto bridge underpass after his mini-truck submerged there while he was trying to cross it. Not just this, there have been several such incidents at this place in the past few years as well.

A PWD official, who asked not to be named, said, “We have set up multiple suction pumps at various places but due to excessive rain, there’s water-logging on certain points. We have been working throughout the night and through the day to ensure the roads aren’t clogged and to clear out waterlogged roads, wherever there are any,” said an official.

A PWD official said that they cancelled all leave for people from the entire department.

It took west Delhi resident Gaurav Patel three hours to take his mother to a hospital in Gurugram, a trip that takes less than an hour.

“Since there was a dry spell for almost two weeks, I decided to take my mother to the hospital in Gurugram. I stay in Hari Nagar. It would have otherwise been a one-hour drive from here, but it took us over three hours to get there. Starting from Pankha Road to Dhaula Kuan to the Ring road, every place was blocked. Traffic came to a standstill. I feel some things never change and water-logging on Delhi roads is one such thing.”