One heavy downpour and the Capital got submerged on Saturday. Even the road right in front of the seat of power, Parliament House, was flooded, something many Delhiites said they had never seen before.

Raju, an auto-rickshaw driver, who was playing good Samaritan by ferrying stranded people, used the choicest words to lash out at the ‘nincompoop” Delhi Government. “They are good for nothing, except corruption,” he said

A young professional, who waded through knee-deep water to reach her office in Lutyen’s Delhi, the better planned part of the city, said it took her over one hour instead of the usual 15 minutes to reach her office.

Another office-goer, who had wade in knee-deep water from the Parliament House Metro station to her office in a VIP area, was left wondering what the plight of those living in congested areas would be.

“The muck seems to have finally reached New Delhi to clog the drains,” she commented, alluding to the huge disparity in basic amenities within the city.

Arterial roads flooded

According to reports, almost all arterial roads were flooded within an hour of downpur, throwing traffic out of gear.

Some people blamed the water-logging on overflowing drains, which they said should have been routinely cleared of plastic and other non-biodegradable matter before the rains.

Traffic snarls

Meanwhile, traffic snarls were reported in almost all areas of the city due to waterlogging as well as non-functional traffic signals. The arterial, Mathura Road, which connects Delhi with neighbouring States, was closed to traffic in the afternoon, forcing many people to turn back.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic was seen at major intersections such as ITO, Laxmi Nagar, Moti Bagh, Kashmere Gate, Munirka, Dwarka and Dhaula Kuan.

The worst off, of course, were pedestrians. “It took me 40 minutes to reach the Akshardham Metro station from my home, a distance which I cover in five minutes,” said Ridhi Chouhan, who works at a private bank in Noida.

>aditi.n@thehindu.co.in

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