Civic body not prepared for monsoon: Court

The Delhi high court on Wednesday reprimanded the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) — now split into three corporations — for not living up to its claims of speedy progress in de-silting the Capital’s drains.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday reprimanded the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) — now split into three corporations — for not living up to its claims of speedy progress in de-silting the Capital’s drains.

HT Image

A bench of acting chief justice AK Sikri and justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw made it clear to the civic agency that their work should not be confined to false claims on paper, but should be felt by the public in the form of roads free of waterlogging, which causes havoc every year.

“What status report? We know what happens every year during monsoon,” the bench told Maninder Acharya, MCD counsel.

The comments came when Acharya countered a PIL filed by NGO Nyaya Bhoomi seeking an end to the problem of waterlogging by saying: “We take many steps to de-silt drains in the city every year and file periodic status reports. This year also we have filed a detailed status report.”

The NGO’s lawyer, Gaurav Bansal, alleged that the MCD and Public Works Department (PWD) had done nothing significant after 1998 to properly de-silt drains, which was causing waterlogging on major roads after even the slightest of rain.

Bansal, in his petition, submitted a list of 41 waterlogging-prone areas in the Capital based on an RTI reply he got from the PWD recently.

It included Ashram Chowk, South Extension Part-I, DPS Road, Mathura Road, ISBT Kashmere Gate, RTR Marg near Moti Bagh flyover, Siri Fort Road, Dhaula Kuan under pass, and under passes around Dwarka.