Festive rush, rain and breakdown of a number of DTC buses brought traffic in parts of the national Capital to its knees on Monday.
Vehicles crawled on major arterial roads and intersections such as Dhaula Kuan and ITO, a Delhi Traffic Police official said.
A dead camel near Delhi Secretariat obstructed traffic along the ITO-laxmi Nagar corridor, the Delhi Traffic Police tweeted.
Three Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses, at Dhaula Kuan, Roshnara Road and Delhi Gate, suffered mechanical failures, causing tailbacks, the official said.
“Traffic is heavy in the carriageway from Bhopura Border towards Ghaziabad due to festival. Kindly avoid the stretch.
“Traffic is heavy in the carriageway from Peera Garhi towards Rohini due to festival. Kindly avoid the stretch,” said alerts put out by the Delhi Traffic Police on Twitter.
Although the people in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) got relief from the sweltering heat on Monday, the heavy rain caused waterlogging in many key roads and residential areas, sparking traffic snarls during peak hours.
The Delhi Traffic Police helpline received many complaints of waterlogging, while many traffic signals also stopped functioning due to the rain.
“Till now we have received more than 80 complaints of traffic snarls from ten areas in the city. We are trying to look into the matter one by one,” a senior police officer in the traffic department said.
He said most of the complaints were related to South Delhi neighbourhoods such as Nizammudin, Malviya Nagar and Okhla, among others. Many complaints were reported from East Delhi as well.
The India Meteorological Department said till 8.30 pm on Monday Delhi had received 29.6 mm of rainfall at Safdurjung, 42.6 mm at lodhi Road, 15.3 mm at Palam, 30mm at Ridge and 10.2 mm at Aya Nagar. It forecast light showers throughout the day.
Common people suffered the most due to the traffic snarls caused by the waterlogging. “Such was the traffic jam due to the waterlogging that I was stuck in the lajpat Nagar-Ashram stretch for one-and-a-half hours. If such is the condition then better Delhi does not receive rain,” said Virender Pradhan, whose office is in Noida, and works in a publishing house said.
People in Noida too witnessed similar situation as office goers and schoolchildren had to suffer the most in massive traffic jams as many signals were not working, adding to the chaos.
Sumit Kothari, who works in a Public Relations firm based in Noida, said roads and bylanes in and around Sector 19 and 20 of Noida were submerged. “I had to drive through a huge mass of water. It was a bumper-to-bumper jam,” he said.