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Suniye Mayor Sahab: MLAs list civic woes before Lko mayor, dy-CM
At the programme organised by the prominent Hindi daily, Hindustan, they also discussed planned development of the city with the help of citizens and officials
Deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak and mayor Sushma Kharakwal brainstormed with the MLAs of the city to save Lucknow from water-logging at a programme ‘Suniye Mayor Sahab’ on Monday.
At the programme organised by the prominent Hindi daily, Hindustan, they also discussed planned development of the city with the help of citizens and officials.
The programme began with MLAs telling the problems faced by them in their constituencies. The MLA from Lucknow Central Ravidas Mehrotra blamed the LMC for not cleaning the nullahs from base and he accused the authorities of doing work only on paper.
MLA from Lucknow West Arman Khan proposed that municipal officials should also contact them before cleaning of nullahs as they know the bottlenecks where the nullahs and drains are choked. He also requested the deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak to increase the number of sanitation workers to keep Old City Areas clean.
MLA of Bakshi Ka Talab Yogesh Shukla expressed concern about the encroachments on drains, resulting in water-logging in many areas of his constituency.
MLA of Lucknow North Neeraj Bora said that CM has approved funds for construction of major nullah which would end the problem of waterlogging in Faizullahganj area.
Akhilesh Singh, representative of MLA Sarojini Nagar Rajeshwar Singh said, “A drain master plan must be prepared like a city Masterplan. One must decide the slope and gradient of drains by using the digital topography mapping technique. The proposal to create a state capital region would be beneficial for the development of peripheral areas of the city. A social audit of all drains should be conducted, and obstacles must be cleaned.”
He said, “Our team spotted 210 water-logging affected areas out of 283 in their constituency. To solve their problems 160 drains have been constructed, 2 new nullahs are made besides that 7 new nullahs are proposed.”
Mayor Sushma Kharwal assured that all drains of the city will be cleaned by June 20 before the onset of monsoon.
She said, “Efforts are being made so that this time there is no water-logging in the city. Even then, if there is water-logging, the responsibility of the officers would be fixed. The work of cleaning drains is going on in the city. For the last one week, I have been personally monitoring the cleaning of the drains.”
Qila Mohammadi drain
Kharwal said, “The water of four assembly constituencies comes out of this drain. In such a situation, if the entire drain is constructed pucca (54 km), then the problem of water-logging in Alambagh and South City would be solved. Similarly, she talked about covering the Haidar Canal for better stormwater management.”
The mayor said that she had also gone to see the cleaning of the drain in Udayganj. Here, due to encroachments on Haider Canal, desilting is a big challenge.
Kathauta lake
The mayor said that the Kathauta Lake has dried up twice in a year because of cleaning of Sharda Canal which feeds the lake. When the canal is closed for cleaning, the lake stops getting water. The lake will be desilted and the depth of the lake will be increased so that it starts storing more water for the days when Sharda Canal is closed.”
Deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak, who was present throughout the interaction, assured the MLAs of full support from the state government. He said, “Lucknow has 83 big nullahs and 80 of them are already cleaned, out of 465 mid-level nullahs 155 are cleaned, out of 944 small nullahs 859 are cleaned.”
He said, “Lucknow expanded very fast in an unplanned way. Now what we need is planned development. For that we need to develop an integrated system for traffic, stormwater drainage, smart roads, proper solid waste management, and 100 % sewer lines.”
