PWD starts clearing Kushak drain after HC warning

Work to clean up the Kushak drain near South Extension Part II here has begun, the PWD said on Monday, three days after the Delhi High Court warning that non-removal of rubble from the channel could lead to jail for the department officials.

The Public Works Department (PWD) submitted a status report with photographs before a bench of Justices Sanjeev Sachdeva and A K Chawla which noted that while the department has started clearing the rubble, substantial work remains to be done.

The status report by the PWD came pursuant to the court's warning on June 16 that the department's officials would be sent to jail for claiming to have cleaned the drain when no such work had been done on the ground.

It had given the department time till Monday to show it was working to clear the drain of construction rubble and carry out de-silting.

The court took on record the PWD's report and its claim that all the debris from the drain would be cleared by June 25-26 and asked it to file a report on June 28, the next date of hearing, indicating the status of the work.

The court told the department that its report should also contain photographs of the site, taken from the same angles as the pictures placed before the bench on Monday.

It also told the PWD that the construction rubble and garbage removed from the drain should be not dumped at the site, but at a landfill.

The court's order came after perusing the status report filed by the PWD claiming it was clearing the drain.

However, Manjeet Singh Chugh, a resident of the area, contended that hardly any work has been done by the civic agency. The court was hearing a PIL initiated by it in

2012 on the issue of water-logging in the South Extension Part II area.