New Delhi: Akbar Khan had to move to a relief shelter Wednesday along with his family as water entered his two-storeyed house at Vishwakarma Colony in South Delhi’s Jaitpur due to a rise in Yamuna water levels. According to area MLA Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, close to 3,000 households are impacted in this area.
“We have been on the road for the past two days. We can’t go back to our house, as the colony and our homes are flooded,” 40-year-old Khan, who has a small business, told ThePrint.
Vishwakarma Colony is one of the 1,731 unauthorised colonies covered under the Pradhan Mantri-Unauthorised Colonies in Delhi Awas Adhikar Yojana (PM-UDAY) scheme announced in 2019 to give ownership rights to residents of these residential areas.
But residents here, and 76 other unauthorised colonies, have not been able to get ownership as these are located in “Zone O (River Yamuna/riverfront)” of the Master Plan of Delhi-2021 (MPD-2021). According to the master plan, the entire city is divided into 18 planning zones designated as ‘A’ to ‘P’. ‘Zone O’ refers to the river and floodplain area.
The residents couldn’t be given ownership rights of their properties because no construction is allowed in ‘Zone O’.
The national capital has this monsoon witnessed the worst flooding in 45 years due to continuous discharge from the Hathni Kund barrage and a host of other factors, such as clogged drains, poor upgradation of drainage infrastructure, unplanned development and encroachment, especially along the river Yamuna.
According to environment experts, the current situation should be taken as a wake-up call by the authorities to start fixing the civic infrastructure and take immediate measures to check unplanned development, especially on the floodplains.
They also cautioned against the Delhi Development Authority’s (DDA’s) plan to delineate the ‘Zone O’, which is proposed in the draft Master Plan of Delhi-2041 (MPD-2041), to allow regulated development in the 76-odd unauthorised colonies that have come up there.
To provide relief to the 76 unauthorised colonies, the DDA has decided to delineate the floodplains. Once the delineation is notified, construction activity can be regularised in these colonies.
While the DDA officials ThePrint spoke to say that delineation is crucial to ensure no further illegal development happens on the floodplains, environmental experts have cautioned against the move.
According to A.K. Jain, former planning commissioner at the DDA, “The ‘Zone O’ was defined in a bid to protect the river and the floodplains. These colonies have come up illegally and to delineate the floodplain will not solve the problem. It will only lead to more construction.”
Environmental expert C.R. Babu, who is a professor emeritus and head of the Centre for Environment Management of Degraded Ecosystems (CMEDE) at Delhi University, told ThePrint that “there was a need to rethink the decision to allow regulated development”.
ThePrint reached the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry and the Delhi government for comments, and a response is awaited.
‘Rethink delineation of Zone O’
In the draft MPD-2041, the DDA has split the ‘Zone O’, spread over nearly 10,000 hectares, into two parts — river zone (active floodplain) and riverfront (regulated).
The river zone is spread over 6,295 hectares, while the regulated riverfront is 3,638 hectares in size. The draft MPD-2041, which was sent to the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry for notification in May this year, is yet to be notified.
According to DDA officials, delineation is crucial to ensure no further illegal development happens on the floodplains and also lay drainage and sewerage infrastructure in the 76-odd unauthorised colonies to ensure there is no flooding in the future, even if Yamuna levels rise.
“Currently, there is no civic infrastructure in these colonies. These colonies have come up over a period of time and have lakhs of residents. We should plan for these areas for planned development of the city,” a senior DDA official, who didn’t wish to be named, told ThePrint.
“There are 76-odd unauthorised colonies in areas such as Jaitpur, Okhla, Karawal Nagar, among other areas. The PM-UDAY scheme is temporarily suspended in these areas from November 2020 after the issue of ‘Zone O’ came to light,” the official added.
However, Babu said there was a need to rethink the decision.
“After what Delhi has witnessed in the past few days, there is a need to rethink the decision to delineate the floodplain to allow regulated development. We also need to take strict action against any new settlement on the floodplain,” he added.
According to him, the current situation was a result of government agencies’ negligence in maintaining and upgrading the drainage infrastructure, and the failure to check encroachment on the floodplains.
Over the years, settlements have come up illegally, and the floodplain of the river has reduced drastically, he said.
“The river has a floodplain of around 5-10km. But in Delhi, it has been drastically reduced due to rampant unauthorised construction, large debris dumps, encroachment, poor planning, etc. At ITO, the floodplain is not even 300m,” he pointed out.
Talking about the drainage system in Delhi, A.K. Gosain, professor emeritus, IIT-Delhi, who helped prepare the drainage master plan of the city that was submitted to the Delhi government in 2018, said, “While drainage infrastructure has to be fixed to ensure that such a situation is not repeated in the future, I’ll say that delineating the floodplain is a bad idea.”
“The DDA should reconsider its decision. Meanwhile, the drainage system has to be fixed though it is a capital-intensive work. We had suggested several short-, medium- and long-term measures to address the problem.”
The recommendations included that there should be no encroachment on storm water drains, no natural or artificial storm drain should be allowed to carry any sewage — only treated sewage of acceptable quality in line with Central Pollution Control Board norms should be allowed in storm drains, among others.
ThePrint reached a Delhi government spokesperson for comment on the implementation of the recommendation but had not received a response at the time of publishing this report.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)