With the monsoon set to arrive in Delhi this week, questions are swirling over the city’s preparedness. Nowhere are the cracks more evident than in the southwest locality of Palam, where a ground visit by Newslaundry has found that the Public Works Department’s claim of “100 percent desilting” doesn’t hold water.
According to PWD’s own progress report, only 60 percent of desilting was complete by June 15, with a revised deadline of June 30. Yet a day later, the department claimed to have finished the job across South West Region 2. And Palam, which falls in this zone, was flooded after just a few hours of rain on June 17.
The national capital made international headlines during monsoon last year when the rain caused part of the airport terminal roof to collapse. This follows a pattern across India: Bengaluru’s tech‐city gridlocked by waterlogging in 2022 and Mumbai, the finance capital, submerged annually during monsoons. Such scenes contrast sharply with the flood resilience seen in many global capitals. Tokyo, for instance, has built a vast network of tunnels and water tanks to divert floodwaters. London relies on the Thames Barrier and a separate stormwater drainage system. New York City, after Hurricane Sandy, began implementing its ambitious Cloudburst Management Plan and Big U sea wall project.
After massive flooding in June last year, Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena had asked for a comprehensive plan instead of a “crisis management” approach. This year, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and Delhi minister Parvesh Verma, who holds key portfolios such as PWD and water, had inspected several drains to inspect ongoing desilting work.
But despite a plan, it seems that monsoon management still revolves around last-minute drain desilting and blame games between civic agencies.
Removed silt seeps back into drains
Every monsoon, the Sabzi Mandi Road in Mangalpuri near Palam metro station road gets flooded with knee-deep water. And despite claims that the area was desilted just last month, the area was waterlogged again with just a few hours of rainfall on June 17.
Desilting prevents waterlogging in vulnerable areas, but leaving behind the silt defeats that purpose because the rain pushes it back into the drains and clogs it again. In April this year, Delhi PWD minister Parvesh Verma had directed officials to ensure the removal of silt and debris from drains within 24 hours of desilting the drains amid complaints about waste lying unattended.
Raj Kumar, an MCD sanitation worker who sweeps the stretch, complained that not much has changed. “They (people deployed by PWD) came to desilt the drain. It’s been around two months and they have still not picked up the mud and debris after completing their work,” he claimed. “We had to remove some of it using a JCB, but not everything can be picked up by it. This is all PWD’s work.”
PK Sharma, the executive engineer at MCD’s M-II division in the Najafgarh zone, seconded Raj Kumar. “That road is under PWD, but anything that happens in Delhi becomes the MCD’s responsibility, no matter whose department it is.”
Other than the silt left behind, there are also bags of debris, big household waste like sofas, toilet seats, etc dumped by residents onto the side of the road, near the drain.
The PWD drain is not the only one that still has silt lying around. The drain on the Palam-Dabri road, which was recently desilted by DDA, is in the same condition, despite having dried silt and debris lying around it.
Dhirendra Kumar, junior engineer at the DDA’s Dwarka chief engineer office, said, “Desilting work is continuous and keeps going on. We have also set an estimate to connect the drain to the main drain."
When asked about the condition of the road, a PWD official said that they would be sending their team to clear the spot.
Need for single framework
In December 2024, the Irrigation and Flood Control Department (I&FC) took charge of the 22 major drains in the city, following a high court order from April that year that called for a unified management of drains and the removal of the multiplicity of agencies in handling the matter. But the smaller drains are divided among agencies.
Kuldeep Solanki, the MLA from Palam, said, “The drains that are deeper than three feet come under PWD, and the ones shallower than three feet come under MCD.”
Accountability evades the system. For example, in Palam, the metro station road comes under the jurisdiction of DDA. At an intersection, on the left, comes the Sabzi Mandi Road under the PWD. Another road in the same vicinity, called the Sagarpur-Palam road, comes under the jurisdiction of MCD.
When asked about the waterlogging on the metro station road, a PWD official said that it was DDA’s responsibility.
Meanwhile, Amit Kumar, assistant engineer at MCD’s M-II division in Najafgarh, claimed the Sagarpur-Palam road, which the MCD is responsible for, does not get waterlogged. “Ye udhar se back marta hai (water comes from the other side)”, he claimed, adding that as soon as the water level in the I&FC drain goes down, the level “here goes down”.
Members of the Residents Welfare Association at the DDA LIG flats at Pocket 13 in Palam say that these authorities keep shifting blame on each other for waterlogging while citizens face the problem.
Rajni, the president of the RWA, said that they wish that it never rains because when it does, children cannot go to school, adults cannot go to work, water enters the apartments on the ground floor and the traffic on the Palam-Dabri flyover – already infamous for traffic jams – worsens.
Rakesh Kumar Tyagi, another member of the RWA, said, “There needs to be a single framework to manage drains, along with coordination. These authorities should be held accountable and they should be penalised for their lack of responsibility.”
Last year, the municipal councillor of Najafgarh, Amit Kharkhari, had observed continuous waterlogging at areas in SWR-1 and SWR-2 (including Palam). Kharkhari claimed he found irregularities in the tendering process through an RTI response. Following Kharkhari’s complaint to the Anti-Corruption branch, Delhi LG VK Saxena had ordered a probe into the matter.
Rainfall last week had exposed Delhi’s unpreparedness for the impending monsoon, with areas such as the underpass near Delhi Cantonment, Zakhira Underpass, ITO, Najafgarh Road and Rohtak Road waterlogged. With desilting work far from over, the upcoming weeks are likely to point to deeper failures.
Newslaundry reached out to the PWD southwest division-2 executive engineer for comment. This report will be updated if they respond.
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