MP Meets CM After Gurugram Flooding, Pushes Underground Drains

GURUGRAM: Hours after calling current flood-control work a "band-aid" and blaming construction over old drainage channels, Union minister of state and Gurugram MP Rao Inderjit Singh met Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini on Wednesday and asked for officers to be held to account.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting at the Chief Minister's residence, Singh said officials responsible for lapses would be questioned. He said the annual flooding would continue until "concrete decisions" were taken, not another round of pumps and desilting after the water has already entered homes and school buses.

His account of the city's hydrology was blunt. Natural streams that once carried hill water into Drain No. 8, he said, have been built over with colonies and roads over the past two decades, with builders encroaching at several points. Those encroachments cannot easily be undone. His proposed fix is that the state fund metro-style underground channels so water can escape at the chronically blocked points. He called that the only lasting answer for Gurugram.

He said work was already under way, with an "explanation call" on stretches where progress has stalled, and asked for a technically sound roadmap prepared with IIT experts. NH-8 and Sheetla Mata Road remain the perennial flashpoints. Civic officials have repeatedly cited unauthorised stilt-plus-four construction as adding to the load, even after hundreds of crores have been spent on drainage.

Monday's rain is the immediate backdrop. The district administration recorded about 75 mm in Gurugram tehsil between 8 am and 3 pm on 24 August. Other official tallies spoke of around 70 mm in a 35-minute burst. Subhash Chowk trapped about 15 vehicles, including nine school buses, with more than 300 children stuck for hours. Golf Course Road, Sohna Road, Rajiv Chowk, IFFCO Chowk, Narsinghpur and parts of Old Gurugram went under. The administration issued a work-from-home advisory for 25 August.

Opposition leaders used the same pictures. Former MP Brijendra Singh criticised the Chief Minister, saying Gurugram and Faridabad, among the state's largest and highest tax-paying urban centres, still suffer poor infrastructure. Rohtak MP Deepender Hooda pointed to a penthouse sold last week for Rs 271 crore and argued that if even a fraction of such money had gone into rainwater drainage 12 years ago, the city would not be "ashamed in front of our next generation."

Congress leader Sheilza Bhatia, former Gurugram Rural district women's president, asked why known trouble spots flood every year. "Everyone knows where the water accumulates, which roads get blocked, and which areas are worst affected. So why does the same problem occur every year?" she said. She also asked where the local MP had been "when Gurugram was drowning." Former Rewari MLA Chiranjeev said Singh had spoken publicly about his own humiliation at a missed invitation but had not addressed the people stuck on waterlogged roads.

Congress general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala accused the state government of failed delivery after what he put at about Rs 1,400 crore spent on Gurugram infrastructure, citing stranded school buses, flooded streets and reports of electric shocks.

Singh's reply, after the CM meeting, is that temporary relief is not a plan and that underground channels — and IIT advice — are. The political argument will now sit beside the civic one: MCG and GMDA are simultaneously taking IIT Gandhinagar professors to the same four junctions. Whether the state actually funds metro-scale drains, or only another explanation call, will show up on Sheetla Mata Road the next time 70 mm falls before evening office traffic.