RAKESH K DHAWAN Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) -WHENEVER there is chaos, may be of any kind in any field in this city every authority starts passing the buck onto each other. It is rightly said that too many cooks spoil the broth. May be this is the price capital city has to pay for having multiplicity of authorities.

(2.) AT the outset we feel constrained to observe that year after year Municipal Corporation of Delhi makes tall claims of cleansing and de-silting of drains of the city that are about 1296 in number which are more than four feet in depth and width spending crores of rupees but every time whenever there is little heavy rains, most of the roads get water-logged due to overflowing drains as life of entire city goes haywire. MCD made tall claims before us by filing a highly detailed affidavit in the year 2006 projecting that it had de-silted and cleansed all the drains and nullahs by keeping all the 96 pumping stations functional around the year and also deploying portable pumps and by setting up control rooms all over and also creating Sanitation Task Force in each zone which is equipped with wireless sets. These claims proved hollow and false when almost a year after there was rain on three different occasions. City suffered the same experience as it did on 18th July, 2006. Worst was the 2nd of August, 2007.

(3.) UNFORTUNATELY during the last week of this month there were rains. Almost same story was repeated. Let us first recreate the scenario that was called the 'morning mayhem' and gave rise to this complaint. It was 18th July, 2006. There was a heavy rain. Drains were overflowing; most of the roads were knee-deep water-logged. There was almost deluge for few hours. Office-goers and commuters had a harrowing time. They were stuck in traffic jams for several hours almost at every inter section of the city. Thousands of vehicles broke down adding to the chaos. The whole of Delhi suffered at the hands of civic and other Government authorities. There was no part of the city, which remained unaffected from the problem of water-logging. The roads of the city are even otherwise in a very bad and damaged condition. Traffic flow was thrown out of gear and crawled all over Delhi. So much so the flight schedules were even affected, as the people could not reach in time to catch the flights. The national dailies were replete with the write-ups and photographs. Some of these were like this.