The national Capital on Saturday witnessed heavy traffic jams due to waterlogging on several busy intersections leaving motorists stuck on the streets. Several areas — Ashok Vihar, Jasola, Okhla, IIT Gate, Chelmsford Road towards Paharganj, Ring Road Sarai Kale Khan towards DND, Sarita Vihar, Defence Colony, INA, Rajghat towards ITO, Aurbindo Marg, Anand Vihar, Wazirbad — were waterlogged following incessant rains on Saturday morning.
Delhi Traffic Police has issued an advisory asking the motorists to avoid these stretches. According to police, about 60 per cent of complaints received on Saturday morning pertained to waterlogging. “Traffic will remain heavy in the carriageway from Moolchand towards AIIMS due to DMRC work. Kindly avoid the stretch. Water logging/sewer overflow under IP flyover. Traffic is slow on Elevated Ring Road coming from North towards ITO,” Delhi Traffic Police updated on the social media.
However, traffic woes gave a harrowing time to commuters in the Capital as heavy rainfall led to waterlogging in several areas and long tailbacks of vehicles on major roads, while a blame-game ensued among the civic agencies over a lack of preparation for the monsoon. Several parts of the city were heavily inundated but South Delhi was among the worst-hit and reeled under severe traffic congestion.
Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Satyendra Jain and senior officials of the department conducted the field inspections to monitor the teams deployed by the department to clear the waterlog at vulnerable points across Delhi.
“PWD teams were active right in the morning at 5.30 am and started attending to the waterlogging wherever it was occurring with the help of mobile maintenance vans, which were well equipped to tackle the rain menace on PWD Roads,” said a senior PWD official. “This was in addition to 529 permanent pumps at different locations to take care of the permanent vulnerable locations,” said the official.
Beside this 131 mobile maintenance vans were also working all over Delhi on PWD roads, with 860 workers on these vans. A total of 584 complaints received on Saturday in the PWD Flood Control Room by 1:00 PM, out of which 408 had been attended by 1 PM itself. The clearance time of water logging varied from 15 minutes to 1 hour.
Residents and commuters faced a tough time as the mouth of flyovers, underpasses and low-lying localities such as Sangam Vihar were flooded due to waterlogging.
“Fortunately, it was a weekend and the water accumulated on major stretches had reduced significantly by the peak hours. Had it been a weekday, things would have gone worse,” Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Sandeep Goel said.
Traffic was thrown out of gear near AIIMS, IIT-Delhi, Ashram-DND flyway, Moolchand underpass, Jasola, Badarpur, Panchsheel, Yusuf Sarai, Adhchini, South Extension and on several stretches of the circumferential Ring Road. Amid the troubles faced by Delhiites, BJP-led municipal corporations and the Public Works Department, which is under the AAP government, traded charges over desilting of drains.
leader of the House in South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) Subhash Arya claimed the civic body had cleaned all drains under its jurisdiction while the problem was due to uncleaned drains falling under the jurisdiction of the PWD.
“All the (drains) under SDMC have been properly cleaned and silt had also been removed. The bigger drains, which the smaller ones ultimately join, fall under the jurisdiction of PWD and they were not desilted, and turned out to be the major cause of waterlogging,” said Arya.
North Delhi Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar also blamed the PWD for the chaos caused by waterlogging.
Commuters, who tried to take diversions from the arterial stretches, ended up being stranded in areas like Safdarjung Enclave, Defence Colony and lodhi Colony, said a transport department official.
Reacting to the allegations, a government official said, “It was observed that the problem of waterlogging occurred because of lot of flow of silt and sludge from the MCD drains, which are upstream of PWD drains.”