Delhi Water Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj on Friday alleged that L-G VK Saxena was responsible for the recent floods in the national Capital as the latter had directed an “innovative method called partial gravitational desilting” of drains which caused huge quantities of silt to be deposited in the Yamuna riverbed.
Responding to a letter from Raj Niwas, the Delhi Government claimed these projects worth several crores were unscientific and illegal, and were not approved by the Minster. “Various desilting and drain/riverbed cleaning projects were being executed under the direction of the LG without sharing any details with the Minister and the elected Government of Delhi,” Bhardwaj said in a statement.
Bhardwaj said that the Haryana Government had already accepted that their engineers did not maintain the ITO Barrage and had suspended the Chief Engineer.
“The HOD of the IFC department was hiding the fact from the Government that the ITO Barrage gates were jammed. It would be interesting to see if the LG would initiate any action against the officer. Also, the Haryana Government sent huge quantities of water towards Delhi through the Hathnikund Barrage while keeping the Eastern Yamuna canal dry, just to save UP from flooding,” Bhardwaj listed the reasons for the cause of floods and sought an explanation from the Raj Niwas.
“Some facts are conveniently concealed regarding various obstructions in river Yamuna that have been created by Central agencies in the name of various road/railway construction projects like the RRTS. Ideally, they should have been removed before the monsoon season. Your good self forgot to mention how huge quality of water was diverted to Yamuna River in Delhi while the Eastern Yamuna canal was kept dry to save UP from flooding. Large quantity of water was diverted towards Delhi despite the fact that the River Yamuna in Delhi was flowing above danger mark,” he said, targeting the LG.