Gururgam: Having witnessed the adverse impact of heavy rainfall in Gurugram in 2016 and 2018, public agencies this time had assured that the city will be able to cope with the monsoon showers. The Thursday rainfall, however, showed that preparation of the public agencies in order to deal with the waterlogging still required more to be done. One-and-a-half hours of heavy rainfall which measured up to 87 millimetres was enough for large parts of the city to be submerged in two to three feet of water, yet again.
Worryingly, the situation was not only bad in the internal area but major areas along the Sohna road that witnesses heavy traffic owing to a large number of multinational companies and residential societies was the worse affected. In certain areas of Sohna road the water rose up to the levels of four to five feet
Other areas that were badly affected included National Highway-8 starting from Shankar Chowk, IFFCO Chowk, Hero Chowk and Rajiv Chowk. Other areas where their huge traffic snarls due to waterlogging were Sohna Road, Golf Course Road, having Chowk, Old-Delhi Road, Jacobpura, Basai Chowk and Sector10 Road. "In 2016 when Gurugram was totally jammed there were 55 millimetres of rainfall in a one-and-a-half hour, this time it was eighty-two millimetres. Yes, there were traffic snarls but the city did not stop. The capability of the city to deal with the rains is improving but yes there is a scope for improvement," said Raman Malik, Haryana BJP spokesperson.
The residents of Gurugram again vented their ire on the infrastructure of the city not being able to cope with the rains. "Few hours of rains and Gurugram roads turn into a river. During this, it is advisable to not travel by cars but by boats. What is even more shameful is that the recently revamped roads where hundreds of crores have been spent also get waterlogged," said Mayank Bharadwaj.