SoBo rail tracks, road waterlogged, BMC, rlys blame each other

The heavy rain combined with the high tide led to rogue waves, which brought in debris and allegedly blocked the drains. According to information from the traffic police, around half a foot of water was logged on the road at Dockyard Junction in Byculla, one to one-and-a-half feet of water in the Azad Maidan area, and one foot in Kalbadevi. Due to this, traffic in these areas was slow-moving all day.

Mumbai: In an unexpected occurrence, water-logging took place on the railway tracks and the road between Churchgate and Marine Lines stations on Thursday. Residents have been facing this problem since 2021 when infrastructural work started in this area.

Mumbai, India - July 27, 2023: Water logging at Maharshi Karve Road, between Churchgate and Marine Drives in Mumbai, India, on Thursday, July 27, 2023. (Photo by Anshuman Poyrekar/ Hindustan Times) (Hindustan Times)

While the India Meteorological Department’s coastal station in Colaba typically records less rain than its counterpart at Santacruz in the suburbs, this was not the case over the last two days. South Mumbai clocked a massive 309 mm in the 36 hours ending 5.30 pm, while the western suburbs correspondingly received 220.9 mm.

“The synoptic situation is similar across the city,” said Mahesh Palawat, vice-president at private weather forecaster Skymet Weather. “Yes, Santa Cruz does typically get precipitation on most days, but there will always be exceptions to the norm. This could be due to winds being more favorable for rain in South Mumbai and the cloud cover being more enhanced, but it’s very hard to say why that’s the case on a specific day.”

The heavy rain combined with the high tide led to rogue waves, which brought in debris and allegedly blocked the drains. According to information from the traffic police, around half a foot of water was logged on the road at Dockyard Junction in Byculla, one to one-and-a-half feet of water in the Azad Maidan area, and one foot in Kalbadevi. Due to this, traffic in these areas was slow-moving all day.

Naresh Kapoor, a SoBo resident and businessman, said, “There was water flowing from a hidden pipe, which was waterlogging the entire area near the flyover on F Road. There is a substation right there, which makes it extremely dangerous, as it can pose an electrocution threat. It was creating traffic problems too; the journey from C Road on Marine Drive to the small causes court, which usually takes me eight minutes, took 15 minutes.” Kapoor also emphasised that South Mumbai residents had been facing waterlogging problems for the last two years. “They have changed the sewerage lines, but this issue remains,” he said.

Suresh Chhabria, a senior citizen living on E Road, said that he was unable to get out of his building on Thursday. “We have been facing this problem since 2021 because the railways pump water from the railway lines into our area,” he said. “Because of this, the E, F, and G roads parallel to Marine Lines get flooded every year. We wrote about this to the railway and an MLA from our area, requesting them to solve this issue.”

Blame game

From Thursday noon, rainwater started accumulating on the rail tracks between Churchgate and Marine Lines stations. The waterlogging led to trains being delayed by eight to ten minutes, especially in the evening peak hours. While the Railways maintained that the BMC’s Coastal Road project had clogged the culverts, the civic body blamed the railways for it.

According to Western Railway officials, the water entered from the west side, from a road running parallel to Marine Drive. “Due to the Coastal Road work, the excavated debris is blocking the outfall, which is why the outfall culverts are operating at half-capacity,” said a senior WR official. “All manholes from the west side of the track until Marine Drive are overflowing. The site has been visited by concerned officials, and action is being taken on high priority.”

The BMC authorities, on their part, blamed the railways for the problem. “The allegations that Coastal Road work led to water-logging on the tracks between Churchgate and Marine Lines hold no water,” said a BMC official. “There was an issue with the outfall on Patan Jain Road in Churchgate, the boundary of which is beyond the Coastal Road project, and so there is no question of it being the reason behind the water-logging.”

The civic authorities said they had cleaned the debris choking the drains on Netaji Subhash Road and Patan Jain Road and also placed high-powered pumps to drain water from the rail tracks.