NEW DELHI: Amid war of words over de-silting of drains in the national capital, Delhi Urban Development Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Monday alleged that he wrote several times since February to Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar to chalk out a comprehensive strategy for drain desilting but he evaded responding to the matter.
The Delhi government had alleged that the issue of de-silting of drains is being raised and it has not been carried out the way it should have been done. To avoid the problem of water logging in the coming monsoon, Bharadwaj had issued a notice on February 6 for a meeting of all departments for chalking out a comprehensive strategy to prevent waterlogging during monsoon.
Addressing a press conference, Bharadwaj said drain de-silting work in the city has not been carried out the way it should have and blamed the “negligence” of officials for the death of the three civil service aspirants due to rain-induced flooding in the basement of a coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar.
“The meeting was scheduled for February 13 but not even one IAS officer turned up. Only executive engineers of departments were present,” said the minister.
Bharadwaj said he wrote a note on February 23 to take action against the heads of departments for not attending the meeting but he did not do anything.
The minister said on May 20, he wrote again to the Chief Secretary on the importance of de-silting. “After a fortnight, I again wrote to him but there was no reply,” said Bharadwaj. The minister alleged that on June 6, he received an “absurd” reply from Kumar.
“Such a letter from the chief secretary in any other state would have led to his suspension. He said that the HC was monitoring the waterlogging situation and they (bureaucrats) had informed the court,” he said.
He alleged that Kumar even misled the high court about the waterlogging and desilting of drains in the capital.
The minister said he also complained about this to the Union Home Minister’s Office through a letter on June 14. Bharadwaj said after constantly pursuing officials he was given a list of drains that had been cleaned on June 20. “I sent that list to the RWA group of my area and asked them whether the drain in the list had been cleaned? On June 23 and June 24, I received some videos from the local residents which the PWD said had been cleaned and it could be clearly seen that silt had accumulated in those drains,” he said.
‘Survey of all buildings’
A Joint Task Force of MCD and DFS, constituted under the order of the Delhi HC in the fire incident at a coaching centre at Mukherjee Nagar earlier this year, will also undertake a survey of all buildings in Rajinder Nagar.
