Ahmedabad: Following 22 inches of torrential rain over Thursday and Friday, several parts of Bopal remained severely waterlogged on Monday, with water yet to recede fully at 27 locations including Bopal Gaam. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s (AMC) sluggish de-watering operations have left residents of Sterling City society in deep distress as streets remain flooded.Sujay Upalkar, a practicing intellectual property lawyer and a resident of Sterling City, highlighted the problem. “For the first time in 25 years, rainwater flooded inside our houses, damaging valuable furniture on the ground floor,” Upalkar said. He also pointed out the civic body’s roadworks in his neighbourhood, “Arbitrary concrete digging on Sterling City road right before the monsoon may pose severe accident risks as more heavy showers are predicted.”
A cave-in formed inside Sterling City in Bopal following rain in Ahmedabad on Monday
PHoto Yogesh Chawda
Another resident Jaykar Bhojak, said that a lack of solution for repeated waterlogging in their area has made matters worse for Bopal residents as well as Sterling City residents. “The white-topping roads were designed to prevent flooding, but because they raised the road levels above societies, waterlogging gets worse,” Bhojak explained. To make matters worse, residents point out that while percolating wells have been built for over 10 years and are legally mandatory for new developments, there is zero maintenance or checks to ensure it is functional.An AMC official claimed they are discharging water into nearby lakes and stormwater lines, but overflowing waterbodies and absent drainage networks continue to stall recovery. With heavy rains forecast for later this week, anxious residents of Sterling City are living under the constant fear of facing the same fate again.
