The Delhi High Court suggested a single unified civic agency for Delhi to manage roads, sewage, drains, and garbage, ending confusion between multiple bodies. The bench stressed, “It should be one civic agency for the whole of Delhi.”
New Delhi: On August 19, the Delhi High Court observed that the national capital needs one single civic agency to manage essential services such as road construction, sewage, garbage collection, and drains, instead of having multiple authorities creating confusion.
A division bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Manmeet PS Arora strongly criticized the lack of coordination between different civic bodies and said that Delhi should have a single system similar to the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which handles all civic responsibilities in Lutyens’ Delhi.
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The bench stated,
“It should be one civic agency for the whole of Delhi. Like it is for Lutyens’ Delhi, it is only the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). Water, construction, drain and road everything. So that’s how it should be for the whole of Delhi. You can make different departments if you want but it should be one agency.”
The court directed the Delhi chief secretary to place this order before the administrator or relevant functionaries of the Delhi government and to file a status report on their views before the next hearing. The matter has been listed for September 3.
During the hearing, the counsel for the Delhi government, on the instructions of the chief secretary, submitted that the Integrated Drain Management Cell (IDMC) was the nodal authority responsible for managing all drains in Delhi.
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However, the bench disagreed and said,
“This appears to be an inaccurate position as the IDMC does not appear as a single agency managing all drains including storm water drains and sewage drains. The purport of the order dated July 28 was that like in the case of NDMC which takes care of all civic amenities in the New Delhi Municipal area, there ought to be one civic agency which would deal with all issues including construction of roads, management of sewage, garbage, drains and storm water drains.”
Earlier, on July 28, the court had already taken note of the “enormous confusion” caused by overlapping roles and responsibilities of different civic agencies.
It had directed the Delhi government to consider centralising civic management and administration for the entire city.
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The bench had also cited an example to highlight the problem, pointing out that storm water drains are managed by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) while sewage lines are under the control of the Delhi Jal Board. Such divided responsibilities, the court noted, are a major cause of mismanagement and delay.
The case is being heard in relation to petitions concerning waterlogging, rainwater harvesting, and traffic congestion in Delhi during the monsoon season and at other times of the year.
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