Same old story, just 15 minutes of rain and Delhi goes to pieces

Just 15 minutes of rainfall on Tuesday evening was enough to nearly drown the Capital as vulnerable spots, repeatedly identified over the decades, got waterlogged and played havoc with the traffic.

Just 15 minutes of rainfall on Tuesday evening was enough to nearly drown the Capital as vulnerable spots, repeatedly identified over the decades, got waterlogged and played havoc with the traffic.

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An ambitious master plan for a drainage system and complex co-ordination between agencies have done rounds over the year but implementation seems far off.

Besides waterlogging, defunct signals were the other culprits in traffic jams. About 50 signals — many on busy arterial roads — broke down during the rains in the Capital, which has 70 lakh registered vehicles.

“Some signals become defunct when it rains, while some do not function due to failure in power supply,” said Anil Shukla, additional CP (Traffic). What makes it worse is that signals are sometimes switched off during rainfall and traffic is manually managed.