To minimise rain mess, cops identify water logging points

Delhi Traffic Police, in a bid to get rid of the problems of water logging in city roads, conducted a survey and identified 160 points that are clogged during the rainy season. The police have drawn up and submitted a map, pointing out these points, to the state urban development ministry and sought its intervention to ensure immediate repair work.

Monsoon may bring relief for Delhiites from the scorching summer heat, but the rains often spell doom for the city roads that are troubled by the perennial problem of water logging.

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Delhi Traffic Police, in a bid to get rid of the problems of water logging in city roads, conducted a survey and identified 160 points that are clogged during the rainy season. The police have drawn up and submitted a map, pointing out these points, to the state urban development ministry and sought its intervention to ensure immediate repair work.

According to traffic police, improper gradient, settling down of base layer of roads, choked inlet points of storm drains, as well as broken roads are some of the prime reasons for water logging at the locations they identified.

Repair of these points before monsoon would give huge relief to road users and improve traffic situation on roads, said Anil Shukla, additional commissioner of police (traffic).“Of the identified locations, 110 are major water logging points, and 50 minor ones. We have written to the ministry of urban development of Delhi government to take remedial measures immediately,” he said.

Roads where more than one lane get submerged in water during monsoon are termed as major water logging points, while roads where less than half a lane is submerged in water are identified as minor points.

KK Kapila, chairman, International Road Federation, wrote a letter to the Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna on May seeking his intervention to put in place a lasting solution to this problem by preparing a master plan of the drainage system, with special focus on drain water along roads in Delhi.

He said: “The project of relaying of roads for which government has sanctioned R2000 crore should be put on hold till a drainage system master plan is in place.”

Every year before monsoon, the traffic police sends a list of water logging-prone roads to road owning agencies, requesting them to repair.

But, according to sources, the process hardly has yielded any significant results so far. “We wrote to the agencies this February also,” said Shukla.