Gurugram: Union Minister of State Rao Inderjit Singh has asked the Nayab Singh Saini-led BJP government in Haryana to immediately launch a vigilance probe into the waterlogging that paralysed Gurugram this monsoon. Singh even named a retired Irrigation & Water Resources department engineer, Shiv Singh Rawat, in the matter.
Rawat, however, told ThePrint Saturday that he did not know why the Union minister singled him out. He, instead, said Singh may have been misguided by some officers.
In an 8 September letter to Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, Rao Inderjit Singh said the department issued hundreds of notices to builders for encroaching on natural drains, but not one encroachment was removed.
He also said no money was spent on cleaning the drains by the department in seven years, and that he wanted those found guilty of inaction punished according to law.
On the last Monday of August, 14 school buses were stuck on flooded Gurugram roads for up to six hours. Children sat inside as water rose around the wheels. Their parents waited at home, unable to reach them. Floodwater receded from most parts of the city only by Wednesday morning.
This is us getting the kids from a bus stuck at Subhash chowk- no police to help. Busy hitting people or doing VIP duty ? @DC_Gurugram pic.twitter.com/tFC1cBkGFw
— Gauri Sarin (@GauriSarin) August 24, 2026
Two weeks later, Rao Inderjit Singh, the Member of Parliament from Gurugram, asked his own government to find out who let it happen, and punish those responsible.
Also Read: Gurugram’s ‘no-waterlogging’ promise sinks, rain traps even CM Saini’s convoy
What Rao Inderjit’s letter says
Rao Inderjit Singh wrote that he held a meeting in Gurugram on 2 September with officials of the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), the Municipal Corporation, the Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP), and other departments. Representatives of agencies hired to deal with waterlogging were also present.
During the meeting, Singh said, urban development adviser and former chief secretary D.S. Dhesi pointed out that keeping Gurugram’s natural rainwater channels and drainage routes free of encroachment is the job of the Irrigation & Water Resources department.
Singh said officials told him about Shiv Singh Rawat, an officer posted in Gurugram district for seven years. Rawat started as an assistant engineer here and was later promoted as superintending engineer, without leaving the district. Singh said he retired only recently.
The letter added that the land under the main natural drains belongs to the Irrigation & Water Resources department. Whether a drain lies inside the Municipal Corporation and GMDA limits or outside, its management falls with the department under the Canal Act, it said. In these seven years, Singh wrote, the department issued “hundreds of notices” to builders under the Canal Drainage Act. But not one encroachment was removed.
The letter also mentioned that those present at the meeting also discussed that the officer, “through corruption”, sat on these notices. It added that the department spent no money on cleaning drains in seven years, and a large part of the city was inundated as a result.
Singh called this “irresponsible and criminal negligence” that he said tarnished the BJP government’s image.
Rawat: Not sure why I was named
Shiv Singh Rawat told ThePrint that he retired nearly four years ago. As Superintending Engineer in the Irrigation & Water Resources department, he was in the construction wing, which takes up and builds new projects. The other wing, Water Services, looks after maintenance and enforcement of the Canal Act. Its Superintending Engineer sat in Faridabad, he said, and an Executive Engineer at Nuh also looked after Gurugram.
As for drainage of Gurugram city, Rawat said, that was the work of the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), which later became HSVP, then the Municipal Corporation, and more recently the GMDA, set up in 2017.
Former chief secretary Depinder Singh Dhesi, now Principal Adviser to the Haryana government on Urban Development, told The Print that, in his opening remarks, Rao Inderjit Singh mentioned that he was aware that the Irrigation & Water Resources department had issued many notices to builders but no further action had been taken beyond issuing notice.
“With reference to these comments the undersigned made the following submissions to Hon’ble Minister. 1] Mr Rawat a retired officer of Irrigation Department who was writing articles in The Tribune giving ‘expert advice’ on why water logging was taking place, had remained posted in Gurugram for many years in Construction Circle, where, during his tenure utilization of budget was next to nothing and there was no worthwhile achievement. 2]Section 45 of the Haryana Canal and Drainage Act 1974 gives powers to officers of Irrigation Department to order the removal of any obstruction from river, stream or drainage channel,” said Dhesi.
Interestingly, Rawat’s opinion piece, “Gurugram’s rain problem is really a planning problem” was published in The Tribune on 2 September, the same day officials briefed Rao Inderjit about the retired officers lackadaisical and “corrupt” approach to Gurugram’s problem.
Rawat further said that, though it was not his domain since he is now retired and was never part of the wing that maintained canals, he wanted to know whether officers of the GMDA, MCG and the district administration ever took the Irrigation & Water Resources department’s permission to construct a new drain that became operational this year. “If the drains fall within the domain of the Irrigation Department, wasn’t it necessary for the GMDA and MCG to obtain the Irrigation Department’s permission?” Rawat asked.
He said that the fact is that the drains in Gurugram have always been managed by the HUDA (later HSVP) and now MCG and GMDA, and that some officers have misguided the Union Minister to save their own skin.
Contradicting Rawat’s claim, a senior officer of the Haryana Irrigation and Water Services department told ThePrint that it would be wrong to say that the Irrigation & Water Services Department’s approval was not taken before constructing a new drain in Gurugram. Whenever a decision to set up a new drainage project is taken in a meeting of all departments concerned under the aegis of GMDA, concurrence of the Irrigation & Water Services Department department is always taken in writing, he said.
The senior officer also said it was a fact that not a single project for a new drain was prepared by the construction wing of the department at Gurugram with as many as 90 employees, including the superintending engineer. The officer said had the construction wing prepared a project for new drains, the government would have given approval and things could have improved.
It is the duty of the Yamuna Water Services wing to manage the drains and the Construction Division that Rawat headed came under a common chief engineer of the Haryana Irrigation and Water Services department, which has its office in New Delhi, the officer explained.
“It is common knowledge within the department that no objection certificates have been issued to builders on areas which are clearly shown as drain areas in the revenue records. This has happened for years and this is one of the reasons that there are large scale encroachments on drains in Gurugram,” said the officer who did not wish to be named.
Gurugram: the city that floods every year
Gurugram’s waterlogging is not new. In 2016, heavy rain led to a massive jam on the Delhi-Gurugram road, with thousands of commuters stuck for hours. Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda told ThePrint last month that this was the first major incident, and that it came two years into the BJP’s term in 2016.
The problem has only grown since. In July this year, the city got 115 mm of rain in 33 hours. Commuters on the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway were stuck for five to six hours, and many got home well after midnight. On 4 September, a jam of about 10 km built up near Shiv Murti on the same road, with hundreds stranded for hours.
Singh has represented Gurgaon in the Lok Sabha since 2009 and has been a Union minister from 2004 to 2009, and then again from 2014 till date. After the August rain, he described the government’s efforts as a “Band-Aid solution” and blamed illegal colonies built over natural drains in the last 20 years, including during the Congress era. Rejecting the charge, Hooda said illegal colonies mushroomed under BJP rule.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Waterlogging in Gurugram: Why Rao Inderjit’s Congress-era blame faces a test of his own record