NEW DELHI: The AAP and the BJP on Monday traded barbs over waterlogging issue in Delhi during the first day of the Delhi Assembly session, with the ruling party blaming the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for not cleaning drains and the latter holding the Public Works Department (PWD) responsible.
The MCD comes under the BJP whereas the PWD comes under the Delhi government. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said people have been facing issues due to waterlogging and it should not be politicised.
He said that the PWD manages nearly 2,000 km of city drains and the remaining ones 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 doing it. If I see any such case, action will be taken against the guilty,” Sisodia said. He also blamed the unification of the three municipal corporations for a ‘very poor system’.
“Earlier, there used to be a director of local bodies of the government but now, the unified MCD has abolished that arrangement,” he added. Other Aam Aadmi Party 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 issue in the national capital saying that the department holds the responsibility of maintaining all the drains but does nothing. “The MCD has managed to clean smaller drains despite adverse financial conditions. There is corruption in the desilting of drains by the PWD. 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.”
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 national capital.
Delhi received its first monsoon showers on Thursday after which many areas including the newly-inaugurated Pragati Maidan tunnel, ITO, Pul Prahladpur underpass, Delhi-Meerut Expressway and Sarai Kale Khan were waterlogged, resulting in hours-long traffic jams.
Condoling loss of lives
New Delhi: The Delhi Assembly condoled the brutal beheading of a tailor in Udaipur and the victims of Mundka fire incident, Manipur landslide and a bus accident in Himachal Pradesh. The first day of the Assembly session began with paying obituaries to those killed in several incidents. Delhi Assembly speaker Ram Niwas Goel extended condolences to the families of those killed in Mundka fire incident and Manipur landslide.
BJP flays closure of govt schools
New Delhi: BJP MLAs staged a walkout from the Delhi Assembly on Monday following a furore over alleged closure of schools by the Kejriwal dispensation. During special mention under Rule 280, the Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri raised the issue of closure of Delhi government schools in the assembly. Even after Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s reply, the BJP legislators continued their protest.