L-G Saxena inspects progress of desilting work in Najafgarh drain

New Delhi: Delhi Lt Governor VK Saxena on Tuesday entered the Najafgarh drain in a motor boat and spent an hour inspecting the desilting work being done there, an official statement said.

It claimed that after Tuesday's visit, Saxena became the first L-G ever to enter the drain where work was being done using the partial gravitational desilting process instead of the conventional

method.

Saxena entered the drain in a motor boat near Punjabi Bagh and spent over an hour inspecting the dredging work in about one km area, it said.

After taking over as L-G, Saxena has been consistently stressing and working towards cleaning the much maligned drain and converting it into an eco-tourism hub, it said.

In the conventional method, the silt is removed from the drain and put on both banks of the drain, which incurs a major cost, it said.

While some amount of silt is transported in trucks, a large quantity flows back again into the drain with rainwater. Further, a part of the silt flowing back into the drain gets carried away with the water while most of it gets deposited at the bed which renders the entire desilting process almost futile, the statement said.

However, the concept of partial gravitational desilting uses the flowing water in the drain itself to take the silt away by loosening and churning it instead of physically removing it as is being done till now, it said.

The churning of the thick silt deposit is being done with the help of non-conventional floating equipment and contraption modified with raker and spikes attached to the boats, the statement

explained.

If the flow of water is fast enough, then the suspended silt can easily be taken along, thereby effecting natural desilting, it

added.