Gurgaon: Union minister and Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjit Singh has urged chief minister Nayab Singh Saini to hold officials accountable for repeatedly assuring him that the city would not face flooding this year.Singh raised the issue during a meeting with Saini at his residence in Chandigarh on Wednesday, questioning why the assurances given at pre-monsoon meetings had failed to translate into results on the ground. “Officials had claimed that there would be no waterlogging in the city. They should now be called and asked why their claims failed,” Singh said.Talking to reporters later, he said piecemeal measures would not solve a problem that has become an annual feature of the city’s monsoon. “Till the time concrete steps are not taken, it will not resolve this problem,” he added.Singh also flagged garbage accumulation amid a strike by sanitation workers, saying rain had made the situation worse by causing waste to decompose and adding to sanitation concerns.He told Saini that the city’s drainage crisis was rooted partly in decades of construction over natural stormwater channels. Licences granted on land containing such drains had altered traditional water routes, he said, while encroachments by builders and illegal colonisers continued to block some stretches despite earlier directions for their removal.“Water will follow the natural flow routes that have existed for centuries,” Singh said, calling for an impartial survey of all such channels and strict action against encroachments.He also proposed underground infrastructure to carry excess rainwater through pipelines to artificial lakes and storage areas around Najafgarh drain, Sultanpur and Damdama lake. With groundwater levels falling, he called for a comprehensive rainwater harvesting and recharge plan.Singh stressed that agencies, including MCG and GMDA, must work together rather than pursue fragmented solutions. The permanent fix, he said, would require identifying the causes of flooding, restoring natural drainage routes and fixing administrative responsibility.Saini, Singh said, assured him that the concerns would be considered while preparing a plan to address the city’s recurring waterlogging and sanitation problems.
