The UT administration, in a report submitted to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana (HC), blamed car parking and allowing the opening of food establishments in HC’s parking domain on the heavy congestion and chaos observed on November 30 last year.
Court paintings were affected, and travelers were stranded for hours in the area; the roads leading to HC and the front component of the court complex were flooded due to heavy rainfall that was observed on the morning of November 30. The delay was so severe that the High Court of Punjab and Haryana The Bar Association had to write a letter to the Chief Justice asking the judges not to take into account adverse orders due to lawyers not showing up in traffic jams.
“The structure of the Punjab and Haryana High Court facilities, being a heritage site, is of paramount importance in the states of Punjab and Haryana, in addition to Chandigarh, and that lack of action on the part of the MC component implied an adequate drainage formula at height. The court’s facilities raise serious questions about its effective functioning,” Judge Sureshwar Singh Thakur and Judge Sudepti Sharma observed in taking suo motu note of the episode. Following the incident, the court sought the reasons for the incident and the corrective actions taken, as well as the main points of the UT’s crisis control plan.
According to the report through Rajesh Bansal, Superintendent Engineer (Public Health Project), Chandigarh, there were fallen tree leaves and other plastic teas in the openings of the road’s ravines, which had blocked water access to the road’s ravines. During the day, there was a large influx of cars and most of the ravines in the waterlogged spaces were covered by cars. Personnel checked to immediately remove the leaves and other materials, Bansal said in his report, saying the pipes opened within 10 minutes. .
The report highlights that the intensity of the rains was very high and unprecedented, especially in November. Because of all those factors, it took some time for staff to lift the blockade, he added, adding that the ravines had been cleared of any blockages five times before the incident, but the last cleanup was carried out during the monsoon season in August last year.
The report highlights that an internal investigation of the campus discovered that over time, many transient food stalls have been installed in the parking lots, especially near the ravines of the road. debris, packaging and oily liquids in the ravines of the road, which causes the chambers of the ravines of the road to be blocked, the connecting pipes and the manholes, which causes incidents of waterlogging,” he points out and recommends that food stalls or other structures that obstruct the flow of water be removed. of or moved out of this area.