Delhi chief secretary didn't respond to several letters on drain desilting: Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj

New Delhi: Delhi Urban Development Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Monday alleged that he wrote several times since February to Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar to chalk out a comprehensive strategy for drain desilting but he evaded responding to the matter.

There was no immediate reaction from Kumar.

Addressing a press conference, Bharadwaj said drain desilting work in the city has not been carried out the way it should have and blamed the "negligence" of officials for the death of the three civil service aspirants due to rain-induced flooding in the basement of a coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar.

"On February 6 this year, I had issued a notice for meeting of all departments to chalk out a comprehensive strategy to prevent waterlogging during monsoon. This meeting was scheduled for February 13 but not even one IAS officer turned up.

"Only executive engineers of departments were present. Since various departments were not represented by their heads, the chairman, that is me, expressed displeasure over the same. This is also mentioned in the minutes of the meeting," he added.

Bharadwaj said he wrote a note on February 23 to take action against the heads of departments for not attending the meeting but he did not do anything.

"On May 20, I wrote again to the chief secretary on the importance of desilting and departments like Irrigation and Flood Control, MCD, and NDMC should share their plans about it but there was no response. After a fortnight, I again wrote to him but there was no reply," he alleged.

The minister alleged that on June 6, he received an "absurd" reply from Kumar.

"Such a letter from the chief secretary in any other state would have led to his suspension. He (Kumar) said that the High Court was monitoring the waterlogging situation in the capital and they (bureaucrats) had informed the court," he said.

He alleged that Kumar even misled the high court about the waterlogging and desilting of drains in the capital.

"The Centre gave two extensions to Naresh Kumar as CS of Delhi. He is ruining the city. The CS gave in writing that the minister (Bharadwaj) can not seek details of desilting citing model code of conduct," he claimed.

Bharadwaj said a contempt of court case should be filed against the concerned officials as they submitted a false report before the High Court regarding the cleaning of drains.

"The chief secretary even misled the high court about the desilting of drains in Delhi," he claimed.

The minister said he also complained about this to the Union Home Minister's Office through a letter on June 14.

Bharadwaj said after constantly pursuing officials he was given a list of drains that had been cleaned on June 20.

"I sent that list to the RWA group of my area and asked them whether the drain in the list had been cleaned? On June 23 and June 24, I received some videos from the local residents of the drains which the PWD said had been cleaned and it could be clearly seen that silt had accumulated in those drains," he said.

The minister said he shared the video of the meeting held on June 28 through social media on Sunday.

"In the meeting, I showed the officers all the videos sent to me by the local people and told them that their department was lying. I challenged them to come with me to inspect those drains, but no officer was ready," he said.

Bharadwaj said none of the officers came as they knew that their lies would be exposed.

"The cleaning of drains is being done only on paper and huge amounts are being given to the contractors... open corruption is going on. Even after this, no action is being taken by either the central government or the chief secretary," he said.