English
Delhi Rains: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded an all-party meeting to discuss monsoon preparedness in Delhi after traffic snarls triggered by waterlogging were witnessed in parts of the national capital following a burst of heavy rain on Tuesday.
Addressing a presser, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva demanded that the city’s Aam Aadmi Party dispensation call call an all-party meeting within 24 hours on the cleaning of drains and monsoon preparedness or be ready to face a protest.
Sachdeva alleged that government agencies were “squandering” hundreds of crores in the name of cleaning drains in the capital city but the results are nowhere to be seen.
“Water Minister Atishi and Mayor Shelly Oberoi were constantly claiming that Delhi was prepared for the rain but those claims proved to be hollow after a few minutes of rain,” the BJP leader said while showing videos of waterlogging in various parts of Delhi.
He claimed that areas such as ITO, Sangam Vihar, Burari, Deoli, Kishanganj, Chanderawal, Rajendra Nagar and Najafgarh — that experienced heavy waterlogging due to rain on June 28 and July 3 — were once again inundated in matter of minutes when rains lashed the city.
Sachdeva alleged that of the 750 drains in the city, about 150 had been cleaned but the silt removed were not lifted. As a result, it flowed back into the drains after the rain.
Addressing the presser, former Delhi Congress chief-turned-BJP leader Arvinder Singh Lovely blamed the lack of monsoon preparedness on the delay in the apex committee meeting because its chairman, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, was in jail.
Delhi is a city where residents suffer from water shortages in the summer, waterlogging in the monsoon and pollution in the winter, he said.
The Delhi BJP demanded that the AAP government call an all-party meeting on monsoon preparedness and desilting of drains after some parts of the national capital faced waterlogging following Tuesday’s heavy rain.
Meanwhile, no immediate reaction was available from the ruling AAP.
Earlier, a brief burst of heavy rains accompanied by strong winds lashed parts of Delhi on Tuesday, causing waterlogging and traffic jams in several areas. The sudden downpour also resulted in a sharp dip in the maximum temperature in the national capital which settled at 33 degrees Celsius.
As per the city’s public works department, 22 calls regarding waterlogging and around three to four complaints of trees getting uprooted, were received till the afternoon.
(With PTI inputs)
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