Desilting work: Delhi Assmebly to punish guilty PWD oppo

The Delhi Assembly today passed a resolution for action against erring PWD officials for their alleged failure in completing the desilting work of the city drains before the monsoon season.
During the special session of the Delhi Assmebly, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators expressed their resentment and complained to speaker about "no work" being done for desilting of drains in their areas before the monsoon rains and demanded that the guilty officials should be "sent to jail".
Meanwhile, the opposition SAD-BJP said that it will oppose the resolution, brought on the recommendation of the Petitions Committee of the house.

"We oppose the report and the resolution as it does not fix the responsibility of the concerned minister and shifts blame on the PWD officials," BJP-SAD legislator Manjinder Singh Sirsa said.
The PWD minister, who was present in the House, also said that "strict action should be taken against the guilty PWD officials" as he added that the engineers of the department have been directed by him to remain in touch with the local MLAs.
Jain said in a meeting with different departments, including the PWD, the municipal corporations, and the DDA, each deprtments was given deadline to complete desilting work by the first week of June.

"They later demanded the deadline to be extended. In a meeting with Lt Governor, the municipal officials had claimed that about 95 per cent of desilting work completed.

Earlier, considering the report, the ruling party MLAs hit out at the PWD officials comparing "lapses" in desilting to "criminal negligence" and "culpable homicide" and also alleged that the BJP ruled municipal corporations had not cleaned drains in their respective area.
"It (desilting) was only on paper and no work was done on the ground. It's criminal negligence. The concerned officials are liable of culpable homicide if there is an outbreak of vector-borne diseases like dengue and chikungunya," AAP MLA from Dwarka Adarsh Shastri said.

His colleague and Laxminagar MLA Nitin Tyagi demanded that the guilty officials to be summoned before the House and "sent to jail".
MLA Akhilesh Tripathi, who was a member of the petition committee, said that wherever the committee members went to inspect claims of desilting work in different Assembly constituencies they were startled to find that "nothing" was done.
"The situation gave us goosebumps as we found the choked drains despite the contrary claims by the officials. In some cases we found stretches of drains were vanishing as there was no outlet and the adjoining roads were waterlogged," Tripathi said.

BJP MLA Jagidish Pradhan complained that the nine member committee had only ruling party legislators and did not visit constituencies of Opposition legislators.
He also demanded a complete ban on polythene carrybags and a fine of Rs 50,000 on its use.
Last week, the committee headed by AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj had recommended divesting senior IAS officer Ashwani Kumar of his responsibilities as PWD secretary and Vigilance director and conduct a probe to fix responsibility for "fraudulent payments" made to contractors for desilting work.
The special session of the House ended sine die by the Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, after passing of the Petitions Committee report.