Heavy rains causes waterlogging, traffic jams in many areas

New Delhi, July 18 (UNI) Heavy rains in Delhi, after a week of lull in rainfall activity, may have brought about coolness in the air and caused much cheer to Delhiites, but it also left them facing the monsoon blues as the rains led to severe waterlogging in several areas of the capital.

Though today's was a short burst of heavy rainfall, it neverthless caused massive waterlogging in several areas including the ITO and Vikas Marg, Ashram Chowk, Sarita Vihar, New Friends Colony, Chittaranjan Park, Okhla, Maharani Bagh, Model Town and Wazir Pur.

The waterlogging led to severe traffic jams in many places like the ITO flyover, Ashram chowk, Vikas Marg and South Extension.

According to information available from the control room of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi set up to monitor flooding during the monsoon, a total of 183 complaints of waterlogging were received from different parts of Delhi following heavy rains that lashed the capital this morning.

The maximum nimber of 65 complaints were recieved from the areas of Central Delhi like ITO, Bahadurshah Zafar Marg and Old Delhi areas like the Chandni Chowk. While 25 complaints were recieevd from the Shahdara(South) zone, 29 were recieevd from the Central zone, 18 each from South Zone and City zone, ten from the civil lines and five each from the Sadar Paharganj and Karol Bagh zones.

The waterlogging belied claims of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi of being in full state of preparedness to deal with the monsoon deluge.

Though the MCD says the desilting process has been completed in a majority of the 1296 drains in the capital, the opposition BJP in the MCD alleges that claims made by the MCD of having completed a major part of the desilting process were only on paper.

They allege that notwithstanding claims by the corporation, a bulk of the desilting was still needs to be done.

Out of the nearly nine lakh metric tonnes of silt in various drains in Delhi, the MCD has till now removed only four lakh MT, which still leaves five lakh MT of silt to be removed, they say.

The MCD, on its part says it has made all arrangements to deal with the problem of waterlogging, including setting up control rooms in all its 12 zones as well as a centralised control room in the head office to receive complaints of waterlogging.

UNI AR VD KN1718