After joint meeting, LG, CM tell agencies to be rain-ready
NEW DELHI: Delhi’s lieutenant governor VK Saxena and chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday held two back-to-back meetings to review the city’s monsoon preparedness and discuss ways to improve coordination between departments and agencies of the Delhi government.
Wednesday’s meetings were also the first official meetings between Saxena and Kejriwal since the LG assumed office on May 26. A day later, on May 27, Kejriwal went to meet Saxena and they briefly discussed issues, but it was more of a courtesy call to welcome Saxena.
The meeting with the LG and Kejriwal on better cooperation between departments took place in the backdrop of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) repeatedly accusing Saxena of overstepping his jurisdiction as he has been reviewing projects of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), which is under the direct control of the elected government. The LG, on the other hand, has direct control over police, land, law and order, and services.
The one-on-one meeting between Saxena and Kejriwal went on for more than an hour, officials in the LG office said.
After this, the LG chaired a monsoon preparedness meeting in his office, which was attended by Kejriwal and deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and a battery of top officials from all key departments such as the chief secretary, the MCD special officer and others.
The meeting is important since Delhi witnesses rampant waterlogging each year due to an archaic drainage system and multiplicity of authorities that manage roads and drains in the Capital.
Both the LG and the CM issued a slew of directions on Wednesday to devise comprehensive longterm measures to deal with waterlogging and overflowing drains. The LG, according to officials in his office, said that working on a “crisis management mode”, which he said has been happening till now, will not be accepted.
“The LG directed officials to simultaneously start the exercise of creating sink holes of 6-8 inches diameter, lined with perforated pipes and covered suitably at the sites prone to waterlogging. He said this should be done along roads, drains and DJB sewer lines that are prone to flooding. The CM agreed with the idea and directed officials to comply with it,” read a statement issued by Raj Niwas on Wednesday evening.
The Public Works Department (PWD) has completed at least 80% of the desilting work and the remaining work will be completed by June 15, a senior PWD official who attended the meeting said. He added that localised action plans and interventions have been lined up for critical waterlogging locations. The department will also set up a central control room from where 10 critical waterlogging sites in Delhi will be monitored 24x7 through CCTV cameras. A total of 2,064 km of stormwater drains comes under PWD.
The LG and CM also directed officials to come up with a timebound plan for laying alternate pipelines for storm water drainage. They also instructed that the drainage master plan should be expeditiously finalised.