Heavy rains paralyse normal life
An overnight downpour hits normal life in the national capital, causing traffic snarls all over the city, report Sidhartha Roy and Abhishek Bhalla.
All it took was an overnight downpour for normal life to collapse in the national capital on Thursday. Road traffic moved at a snail's pace on waterlogged roads, commuters were stranded for hours, trains came to a halt, flights were delayed and worse, Delhi was almost cut off from the world.
The capital registered a rainfall of 184.6 mm from 8 am on Wednesday till Thursday evening, heavy enough to cause traffic snarls all over the city. The rain and the traffic jams had started on Wednesday evening itself with South Delhi being the worst affected. There were traffic jams in Mehrauli and Chhattarpur well past midnight due to the rains and malfunctioning of traffic lights.
The condition worsened on Friday morning as the roads got flooded and traffic came to a grinding halt. The worst affected were Ring Road, Dhaula Kuan, Indraprastha Estate, Nizamuddin Bridge, Chirag Delhi, Aurobindo Marg, Rajouri Garden, Wazirpur and Model Town.
People had to drive through waterlogged roads and managed to reach their offices only by lunchtime. “I left my Paschim Vihar residence at 8.30 am and reached my R.K. Puram office after 1.30 pm. The drive usually takes less than an hour,” said Ashim Batra, a senior official of Indraprastha Gas Ltd.
Delhi became an island on Thursday as commuters from NCR areas like Gurgaon and Ghaziabad found it almost impossible to reach the capital.
The rains exposed the blatant lies of the MCD, which is entrusted with the task of cleaning up the 1,265 drains under its jurisdiction — a task MCD claimed it had completed a month ago.
With the met department saying that there will be more rain on Friday, expect more traffic jams. Also, the combination of waterlogging and heavy vehicles means that roads could get severely damaged.