Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena on Friday wrote a letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, listing factors that caused massive floods in the national capital and suggesting a slew of measures to prevent them in the future.
The LG said that out of the 44 km of Yamuna in Delhi, the 22 km stretch from Wazirabad to Okhla has 18 major obstructions inside the river, which resulted in impeding the free flow of water.
“Lapses on the part of the government include the outdated and inaccurate level-based discharge computing table held by the Delhi Jal Board to compute the discharge at Wazirabad barrage and the unprofessional practice of the government departments of not clearing the construction and demolition (C&D) and other waste from bridge construction sites that obstruct the free flow of Yamuna,” the letter read.
Saxena also held a heavy accumulation of silt in Yamuna over the last several years, and a lack of desilting was one of the reasons for floods in Delhi.
“Najafgarh drain, which brings the maximum discharge from the city into the Yamuna, is filled with silt and garbage to the tune of 108 lakh metric tonnes. This severely affects the water holding and carrying capacity of this 57-km-long channel,” he wrote.
The LG further said that there was not one single department or agency that had ownership of Yamuna, especially during the floods.
Mentioning measures to prevent floods in the national capital in the future, the LG said permanent ownership of the Yamuna river stream must be assigned to one department.
