Rs 650cr Civic Centre leaks

With a glitzy glass and steel façade, the 100 metre tall Civic Centre was shown off as a stateoftheart tallest building in Delhi. But one heavy shower and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) headquarters building, inaugurated three months ago, looked worse for wear from inside. HT reports

With a glitzy glass and steel façade, the 100 metre tall Civic Centre was shown off as a stateoftheart tallest building in Delhi.

HT Image

But one heavy shower and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) headquarters building, inaugurated three months ago, looked worse for wear from inside.

After it rained continuously for more than an hour on Tuesday, the area surrounding the Civic Centre turned into a large pool of water. Not just that, all wings inside the building saw waterlogging; and few walls showed massive seepage.

The sad story of a new but dilapidating building didn’t end there. Pipes that bring down run off water from floors above to the basement had cracked at the joints.

Because of that, the entire basement and the circular pathway that leads to basement parking, was flooded.

Several walls of the basement in Block A showed seepage with water dripping down the edges.

MCD’s Leader of Opposition Jai Kishen Sharma, who took the media to inspect the building, said, “Even after the cost escalated from Rs 500 crore to Rs 650 crore, the work is substandard.” He said that despite the knowledge of rains to come, adequate measures weren’t taken to prevent this.

“We demand a CBI inquiry into the poor construction quality. Also the Malaysian private firm be blacklisted and its payment stopped. At this rate, the work will not finish even in three months,"Sharma said.

Sunil Tyagi, MCD’s Chief Project Manager for the Civic Centre, defended the construction. “Our work is still going on. The seepage was due to gaps called expansion joints. These are yet to be covered. Also, there would be no waterlogging at any place once the system of pumps and pipes are in place completely,” he said.