Following the High Court directions, a daily progress report on the desilting of the Taimoor Nagar rainwater drain and cleaning of the nullah flow into the Yamuna riverbed is now being sent to Maharani Bagh’s Senior Counsel Anant N. Haksar.
The Delhi High Court had directed the PWD and the MCD to work at a brisk pace and to report on the status of the work being carried out with photographs on a daily basis to the Senior Counsel, who also resides in Maharani Bagh and also personally inspects the cleaning operations periodically.
The Court order was issued late last month when the Court was seeking a report on the compliance of its earlier order directing the concerned departments to ensure that this drain is cleaned to enable the flow of rainwater from Southeast Delhi into the Yamuna.
The High Court bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, in a strongly worded order on 29th November, had also constituted a special task force to look into the issue and submit a report. The Court was responding to the feedback of this task force.
The report also mentioned that the pace of work was not as expected due to certain areas being too narrow for the heavy cleaning equipment to move through.
In its petition, the Maharani Bagh Co-operative House Building and Welfare Society Ltd. (MB CHB&WS) supported by Maharani Bagh Residents Welfare Association (RWA), represented by Anant N. Haksar, the senior counsel appearing pro bono had highlighted the need to demolish illegal construction on both side of the Taimoor Nagar and Khizrabad drains and also removal of all silt and piles of garbage all the way, up to the Yamuna flood plain.
This was the source of all flooding in South and Southeast Delhi during the monsoon, the residents explained. Most newspapers had carried out articles with photographs showing the devastation caused to their shops, homes, vehicles and other commercial establishments during the last monsoons, not to forget the young lives lost in the basement of a coaching centre.
As the ‘Nallah’ continues to be clogged with filth and encroachments all-around, short-term measures will only result in optics; the new Chief Minister of Delhi has placed cleaning of Yamuna as a priority, and the residents of Southeast Delhi will be closely watching how this part of the Yamuna floodplains the Chief Minister intends to clean.
