Monsoon malady: Roads flood with just 2 days' rain

As traffic on these roads crawled, civic and road-owning agencies blamed each other.

Even as the monsoon arrived in the national capital 16 days behind schedule on Tuesday, a delay that state officials said gave them enough time to de-silt the city’s drains and prepare it for the rains, all it took was a few hours of rain to lead to waterlogging and for Delhi’s traffic to be thrown out of gear. Data from the state traffic police shows that at least 96 roads from a list of 150 stretches identified as “waterlogging prone” last month ended up with knee-deep water after Tuesday’s showers.

A motorist pushes a scooter past a waterlogged stretch during heavy rain near Vinod Nagar in New Delhi. (Ajay Aggarwal /HT PHOTO)

The list of stretches was sent to all road-owning agencies, including the state Public Works Department (PWD), the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the three municipal corporations (north, south and east MCDs), the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), and the Delhi Cantonment Board, warning them of impending snarls and choked drains as a result of the showers.

Despite this, information from the Delhi traffic control room revealed that long traffic jams were reported from and around many of these stretches on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The list includes Azadpur underpass, Pragati Maidan, Airport underpass, Palam Colony (below Palam flyover), Adchini T-junction, Hyatt flyover, RK Puram Sector 12 (near DPS School), Dabri Mor, Najafgarh-Uttam Nagar T-junction, Okhla underpass, Patparganj Road, Swami Dayanand Marg, Ramdev Chowk in Narela, Bhajanpura main road, Jahangirpuri Metro station and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) flyover, among others.

Traffic police said that Azadpur Chowk, which was among the stretches flagged by the department last month, was submerged in rainwater on Tuesday. The stretch was shut and traffic diverted towards Mukarba Chowk, as PWD officials worked on getting the road dry.

Similarly, road 57 near Swami Dayanand Marg (towards Shahdara), which also featured in the list, was also closed for traffic on Tuesday evening because of severe waterlogging.

And, officials said, traffic is only likely to get worse, with the Met department predicting more intense showers in coming days.

Muktesh Chander, special commissioner of police (traffic), said a list of flood-prone stretches is prepared and shared with road-owning agencies every year.

“These stretches are no longer a secret. All the agencies by now know which roads under their jurisdiction are prone to water-logging. Though the job of the traffic police is only to manage traffic, every year we communicate our concerns and send a list of such stretches. But ultimately it will have to be fixed by the agencies concerned,” he said.

As traffic on these roads crawled, civic and road-owning agencies blamed each other.

“Even though the work of de-silting drains was delayed this year because of the Covid-19 lockdown, we have completed the process. Usually, de-silting large drains takes around three months, but we started it in March and despite the break, managed to finish work on all the drains by the first week of July,” said a senior PWD official.

The official added, “The major reason behind water-logging every year is the large quantities of waste, mostly plastic, that gets clogged in drain mouths and leads to water flowing back to roads. No matter how much you clean the drains, the trash continues to pile up and end up clogging them.”

Meanwhile, municipal bodies directed blame at the PWD and the state’s Irrigation and Flood Control Department, for not maintaining drains along arterial roads, which they said then overflows into internal streets.

“Our drains are 100% de-silted, but since the Delhi government has not done its share to clean the main drains, water overflows from arterial roads into colony roads,” claimed south Delhi mayor Mukesh Suryan.