Delhi Assembly election: Laxmi Nagar plagued by crumbling infrastructure

Narrow lanes, crumbling infrastructure and irregular construction, that's how one can summarise east Delhi's Laxmi Nagar constituency.

The constituency, popularly known as a hub for imparting education for Chartered Accountants' course, has a heterogeneous population which is over one lakh. Many students come to take coaching classes here and live in rented rooms at very high prices.

The constituency lacks basic amenities like drinking water, sewer lines and parking space. Illegal construction is another headache in the area.

Aam Aadmi Party's Nitin Tyagi is the MLA here and East Delhi Municipal Corporation is the civic body. The area sees waterlogging during the rainy season due to bad or no sewerage system.

Speaking to IANS, ex-MLA from Laxmi Nagar, Vinod Kumar Binny said "Providing parking is the biggest challenge for whosoever comes to power in this constituency. Looking at the number of people residing here, a multi-storey parking is urgently required. No one can park even a two-wheeler, let alone a car. People here face acute water shortage. Also the lanes are extremely narrow here. Recently one building collapsed at Lalita Park. The entire area is earthquake-prone. Therefore the government needs to think about these issues seriously."

However current MLA Tyagi, who was elected in 2015 polls said "We are planning to build a few parking areas but the GDA has impeded the work claiming to have some technical issues. We hope to sort out the issues soon with GDA and we will have parking lot very soon at Laxmi Nagar."

He also said that "the drinking water is generally good here but pipelines are very old. We plan to revamp the pipelines if voted to power," adding "I think the biggest challenge that I face in the area is changing the capacity of sewer lines in almost the whole of the constituency. The sewage water enters into two main sewer lines. One has been repaired, now we can move ahead with another one."

According to the people in the area, the constituency needs better infrastructure, drinking water and better traffic regularisation. People say that brawls breakout due to lack of parking space. They also say that coaching centres have mushroomed in illegally constructed buildings that lack proper fire safety measures.