Delhi Municipal body fined for flooded streets

Blue Star
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Delhi Municipal body fined for flooded streets

New Delhi: In a first of its kind order against a civic agency, the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission on Tuesday slapped a fine of Rs 25 lakh on the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for failing to prevent water logging on Delhi’s streets recently during the rain.

Taking cognisance of a series of recent reports in the Hindustan Times, the Commission expressed anger over the fact that every year the MCD “makes tall claims” of cleaning the drains spending crores of rupees. But one heavy downpour was enough to cause water logging and commuters were put to immense hardship with traffic coming to a grinding halt as experienced during the recent rain.

Bringing every citizen under the definition of “consumer” for the first time, a bench of Commission president Justice J.D. Kapoor and member Rumnitta Mittal said “the public is getting services like road, electricity and water after paying tax and therefore they are liable to be compensated for any loss, injury or mental agony owing to deficiency of service”.

The order came on a petition filed by a group of residents of Chittaranjan Park seeking an intervention to put an end to the civic agencies’ “callousness”.

Reacting to the report ‘It is money down the drain-roads clogged as MCD fails in its promise to clear drains’ and ‘Delhi roads cope with traffic nightmare’ in HT dated May 22, 2008, Justice Kapoor said, “We feel constrained to observe that year after year MCD makes tall claims of de-silting of drains but the rain god proves their claim hollow every time”.

“We find the MCD guilty of extreme deficiency of service in not discharging its obligatory functions as a result of which the city is crippled and life paralysed every time it rains,” he said.

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