Desilting work of 32-km sewer lines in Delhi completed

New Delhi, April 15

Desilting of 32.58 km out of the 90.34 km of the trunk or peripheral sewer lines in Delhi has been completed and the remaining work will be completed by June, officials said today.

Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) VK Saxena who is also the chairman of the National Green Tribunal-appointed high-level committee (HLC) for the rejuvenation of the Yamuna on Friday reviewed the progress of works on desilting of trunk sewer lines and trapping of sub-drains falling into the Najafgarh drain, a senior official of Raj Niwas said.

The L-G also reiterated that ghats and floodplains of the Yamuna will be cleaned by June 30, while other works will continue simultaneously.

Seventeen major sub-drains falling into the Najafgarh Drain and 13 sub-drains in the supplementary drain had been completely trapped, he said.

Since taking charge as the chairman of the HLC after the NGT’s order of January 9, the L-G has chaired three monthly meetings of the committee, apart from reviewing the progress of works through several intermittent meetings with concerned officials, the official added. Saxena directed that the remaining 530 km of sewer lines (45 km span with one metre and above diameter, and 485 km span with less than one-metre diameter), be completed by the end of this year.

Major sewer lines where works have been completed or are in progress till now, are Moti Nagar trunk, gravity duct I, Keshavpur and Nilothi trunk, Coronation Pillar trunk, Okhla trunk and Dwarka trunk, officials said.

The L-G was also informed that of the 44 major sub-drains falling into Najafgarh drain identified for trapping, 17 had already been trapped and the remaining will be trapped by October this year, an official said.

The major sub-drains trapped till now include Hakikat Nagar drain, Shakti Nagar sub-drain 2, Rana Pratap Bagh drain and Balak Ram drain. Similarly, of the 30 sub-drains falling into the supplementary drain, 13 drains had been trapped and the remaining will be trapped by October. The sub-drains trapped include the Badli sub-drain, Wazirabad sub-drain and Rohini Sector 16 sub-drain.

It has been established that about 70 per cent of pollution in the Yamuna is on account of the untreated sewerage brought into the river from the Najafgarh Drain. The Najafgarh Drain, in turn, gets this untreated sewer from the sub-drains falling into it, the Raj Niwas officials said.