Monsoon blues: Day 2 brings Delhi to a grinding halt
Traffic jams, Metro strand commuters
Intermittent heavy rains for the second consecutive day on Monday in the national capital region added to Delhiites’ woes.
Negating the tall claims of the civic agencies about their pre-monsoon preparedness, almost all the major arterial roads in
the city witnessed waterlogging for hours, leading to heavy traffic snarls on several roads during the morning peak hours.
Traffic was also affected due to uprooted trees at several places. Meanwhile, Metro services were affected on the Dilshad
Garden-Rithala Line on Monday morning due to problems in overhead electrical supply.
As rain lashed the city, waterlogging was reported from Mehrauli Badarpur Road, Mathura Road — from CRRI to Ashram, Bhairon
Marg, Mahipalpur Chowk towards Mehrauli, Dwarka underpass, Airport Road, Station Road in South Delhi; Moti Bagh, Brar
Square, Dhaula Kuan, Azadpur and Model Town on Ring Road; Uttam Nagar and Paschim Vihar flyover in West Delhi; Burari and
Nathurpura in North Delhi, and Pandav Nagar, Laxmi Nagar, Vikas Marg and Mother Dairy in East Delhi among others.
Even as the civic agencies engaged in blame game over desiltation of drains, Delhi Traffic Police said preventing
waterlogging is the work of civic agencies and they had informed the concerned agencies about the vulnerable points in the
city well in advance. “We have provided the civic agencies with a list 157 points that may suffer waterlogging. It is their
responsibility to take all the measures to prevent waterlogging. No complaint of traffic lights getting dysfunctional was
reported from across the city,” said special commissioner of police (traffic), Taj Hassan.
Meanwhile, thousands of commuters were stranded at different stations on the Dilshad Garden-Rithala Line of Delhi Metro
after services were disrupted for over one hour during the morning peak hour. According to a Metro official, “Due to sudden
need of maintenance work of electric supply line, services were partially suspended from 10.30am to 11.45 am.”