Gurgaon: Rain leaves city submerged, MCG measures fall through

The city came to a standstill after the 30-minute spell of rain. Pedestrians were forced to walk on the waterlogged roads, which are riddled with potholes. The problem was compounded by the fact that most stretches do not have pavements for pedestrians to walk on.

Most city areas, including major roads and intersections, were waterlogged following the 18mm rain on Friday and traffic movement was slow.

Roads in sectors 4, 7, parts of 15, 21, 22, Udhyog Vihar, Carter Puri, Old Gurgaon Road, Lakshman Vihar, Arjun Nagar, Sushant Lok-1, MG Road, Iffco Chowk , Hero Honda Chowk and Dhanwapur Road were worst affected. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

The city came to a standstill after the 30-minute spell of rain. Pedestrians were forced to walk on the waterlogged roads, which are riddled with potholes. The problem was compounded by the fact that most stretches do not have pavements for pedestrians to walk on.

Roads in sectors 4, 7, parts of 15, 21, 22, Udhyog Vihar, Carter Puri, Old Gurgaon Road, Lakshman Vihar, Arjun Nagar, Sushant Lok-1, MG Road, Iffco Chowk , Hero Honda Chowk and Dhanwapur Road were worst affected.

The city received heavy rainfall for around half hour at noon. Officials of India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted more spells of rain over the next two days.

Even as the civic agencies had claimed to have cleaned drains last month to avoid waterloggging during the monsoon, residents continued to face inconvenience as roads got submerged in many areas.

The construction of the underpass at Iffco Chowk and Rajiv Chowk has made compounded the waterlogging problem, commuters who used the Sector 44 and South City-I road, said.

“At the Sector 40 and 44 junctions, the road gets submerged after just 20 minutes of rain. If this is the situation pre-monsoon, I am apprehensive about the condition of the city during the monsoon,” said Kritika Sharma, a commuter at Huda City Centre Metro station.

Another resident, Gaurav Sharma, at Signature Tower, said, “The traffic movement gets affected because of waterlogging on the stretch. Even though there are police officials on roads, they cannot clear the traffic during heavy rain. The civic bodies have to work on clearing rainwater from roads.”

The Jharsa Crossing, Sector 38 Road, Sohna Road, Sector 65 and Sadar Bazar stretch also witnessed waterlogging in the afternoon.

“Water from major areas have already receded and our teams are working on clearing any obstacle in the drainage system,” Yashpal Yadav, Huda administrator, said.

Besides waterlogging, residents also faced power outages across the city throughout the day. The worst- affected areas were Sector 28, DLF Phases 1, 2, 3, Sector 24, Rajendra Park, Sector 39, South City 2, Sector 22 and Palam Vihar. The power was restored at around 6pm in most of the areas.