The AAP and the BJP on Monday traded barbs over the issue of waterlogging in the national Capital in the Delhi Assembly, with the ruling party saying the problem was a result of the Municipal Corporation Delhi (MCD) not cleaning drains and the latter holding the Public Works Department (PWD) responsible.
During the discussion on the first day of the Delhi Assembly session, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said people are facing problems due to waterlogging in the city and the issue should not be politicised. The BJP rules the MCD the PWD is a Delhi Government agency.
He said nearly 2,000 km of the city drains come under the jurisdiction of the PWD and the remaining are maintained by the MCD and other agencies. "There is confusion among people over the jurisdiction of agencies. We cannot justify the PWD and the MCD in this House. It's a crime if any agency claims to have desilted a drain without actually having done it. If I come to know that this happened in case of any PWD drain, action will be taken against the guilty," Sisodia said.
He also said that a "very poor system" has come up in MCD due to the unification of three municipal corporations. "Earlier, there used to be a director of local bodies of the Delhi Government but now, after making some new rules, they (unified MCD) have abolished that arrangement. Later, they said that Assembly cannot ask questions (on issues pertaining to MCD)," he added. AAP MLAs including Rituraj Govind, Kuldeep Kumar, Sanjeev Jha and Rakhi Birla also spoke on the issue of waterlogging and blamed the MCD for it. They alleged that the MCD has not been properly desilting the drains under its jurisdiction, which leads to waterlogging.
Countering the AAP, BJP MLA Jitendra Mahajan said the PWD is to be blamed for waterlogging in Delhi as it is responsible for maintaining all the big nullahs but does not clean them."The MCD has managed to clean smaller drains despite adverse financial conditions. There is corruption in desilting of drains (byPWD). A joint committee should be set up to ensure proper desilting of drains and there should be no politics over it," he said. BJP legislator Abhay Verma said, "Why are only PWD roads waterlogged? The rainwater from smaller drains flows into bigger drains managed by the PWD that are clogged. As a result, the water spills over onto roads and underpasses."
According to Government data, there are about 2,846 drains in Delhi and their total length is about 3,692 km. The PWD manages around 1,100 drains with a length of 2,050 km along 1,260 km of roads across 17 divisions in the city.
Delhi received its first monsoon showers on Thursday after which many areas including newly-inaugurated Pragati Maidan tunnel, ITO, Pul Prahladpur underpass, Barapullah corridor, Delhi-Meerut Expressway and Sarai Kale Khan were waterlogged, resulting in hours-long traffic jams.
