NEW DELHI: Winter has set in. The monsoon withdrew months ago. Yamuna has shrunk to its narrow winter course. Yet in Shaheen Bagh, a key road remains submerged under stagnant gutter water. In this neighbourhood, best known for its famed Anti-CAA protests in 2019-20, now dark water blankets most of the road, carrying floating plastic, food waste and an oily sheen. The stretch, more than 100-metres long, near Okhla’s N block has once again turned into a dangerous, open manhole. “Several vehicles have broken down here in the past few weeks,” said Shahzad Ali Idrisi, a Shaheen Bagh resident. The drain has merged invisibly with the flooded road. “E-rickshaws have fallen into open drains. People have been injured. Accidents are waiting to happen.”As bikes splash through the water, guessing where the road ends and open drains begin, auto and e-rickshaw drivers often refuse to enter the stretch; most demand extra money. Pedestrians wait, calculate, and turn back. “I fear slipping every day,” said Rida, a student from Abul Fazal who walks this route to her coaching centre. “The water is filthy. If someone falls, who will take responsibility?” she asks.
What should function as a public road works only for SUVs and trucks with high ground clearance. Others with smaller cars hesitate to bring vehicles through the flooded patch, especially at night, fearing damage to engines and brakes. On municipal maps, it is an ordinary local road that connects the rest of Okhla to Shaheen Bagh. On the ground, it is one of Okhla’s most important connectors. Thousands depend on it daily, from office-goers headed towards Kalindi Kunj, students walking to coaching centres, daily-wage workers travelling to nearby markets, to funeral processions bound for a local burial ground.For local pedestrians, especially women, children and the elderly, the road has become an obstacle course.“This is no longer monsoon water,” said Shazia Khan, who lives in an adjacent N Block lane. “Yeh toh saal bhar ka paani hai.” This is year-round water.Shazia has two children. Her daughter’s school bus stop lies across the road, near Jasola Puliya. “It is barely a two-minute walk,” she said. “But I have to plan how she will cross every single day, make arrangements. I cannot send her alone.”“Children have to walk through this water,” she added. “Their clothes get soaked. Their shoes are ruined. And there is the constant fear of infection.”Parents say prolonged waterlogging has led to persistent health problems. Children complain of itching and rashes. Fever and stomach infections recur.
The Shaheen Bagh police station stands just metres away. Residents say multiple complaints have been made to the MCD, including by the police station itself, but with no lasting resolution.The waterlogging also threatens the Gore Ghabiran Muslim graveyard next to it. The caretaker of the graveyard, Mufti Abdul Raziq, said water collects directly against the boundary wall.“The water builds up right against the graveyard wall,” he said. “I have informed both the councillor and the MLA several times, nothing happened. The wall is at risk of collapsing.”Two years ago, a section of the wall gave way after prolonged water damage. Repairs cost in lakhs, raised through community donations. “Rebuilding is difficult. Every time, it brings fresh expenses,” Raziq said. Funeral processions are often forced to stop before reaching the gate. “The procession is on foot, and entering this impure drain water breaks their wudhu,” he said. If the wall collapses again, graves could be damaged. “This is not just a road problem,” Raziq said.Even road repairs when they take place, residents say, are largely cosmetic.
Akram Malik, a nearby shopkeeper with a scraps business, pointed to poor drainage design and chronic neglect. “In places, the road sits lower than the drain outlet, leaving water with nowhere to go. Before the monsoon, drains are often cleaned superficially, with silt pushed to the roadside and garbage left uncleared. Once it rains, the waste slides back into the drains, choking them,” he said. In the absence of lasting intervention, residents have repeatedly stepped in. This August during monsoon, locals pooled money and collected Rs. 50,000 to hire private workers to clean the choked sewer after appeals to the local MLA and councillor went unanswered. Mohammad Anis, who was part of this emergency effort, said residents pay twice. “Once by wading through flooded neighbourhoods. Then from our own pockets.”Residents say the physical hardship is compounded by a political blame game between elected representatives.Speaking to TOI, Ram Raj Meena, Executive Engineer (Maintenance) of the MCD’s Central Zone, said, “The issue is that the drain here connects to the Jasola drain, which falls under UP Irrigation and Water Resources’s jurisdiction.”He added that MCD’s mandate in unauthorised colonies is limited. “All complaints from residents, and the local police station have reached us, but the matter had to be referred to the Delhi Government’s Irrigation and Flood Control Department (I & FC), since it’s an unauthorised area.”Insiders at the MCD also pointed to residents’ civic habits as a compounding factor. “People don’t follow civic sense. Garbage, construction debris, even old beds are dumped into drains. Desilting is difficult in thickly populated areas because the drains get choked with waste,” said one official.“Designated garbage spots should be used by the locals. With public cooperation, our manpower can work efficiently. Right now, in many houses, garbage is only cleaned from inside homes in the morning around 9-10 am and then thrown outside, further blocking the drains,” he added.Former Congress MLA Asif Muhammad Khan and local councillor Ariba Khan have blamed sitting AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan for flawed sewer planning. Asif Khan alleged that excess water from the Okhla tank, fed by an old canal originating near Jasola, was diverted into the Shaheen Bagh–Abul Fazal drain, far beyond its designed capacity. ‘“The canal was earlier discharged into the Agra canal during the monsoon, but now, for over a month, has started to flow into local drains,” he told TOI. “This drain is not designed to take that load,” Ariba Khan warned, adding that if more water is released, homes and basements in Shaheen Bagh and Abul Fazal Enclave could flood, with seepage already worsening in interior lanes.AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan maintained that a long-term solution is being worked upon. “Any work could not be done as pollution related restrictions were implemented in December. We will take it up now,” he told TOI.However, with the Graded Response Action Plan IV (for ‘severe pollution’) curbs now lifted, the timeline for the work remains unclear.By the time these arguments have played out, residents say, another season passes and the water barely recedes.“Shaheen Bagh is no ordinary neighbourhood. It became a national symbol of resistance,” said Manzoor Ahmed, referring to the women-led sit-in against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019–20, with images of elderly women reading the Constitution travelling across the country.The irony is not lost on residents. “The same area that once hosted lakhs in a disciplined, self-organised protest now struggles to secure something as basic as a passable road,” he said. Months after the monsoon, with no rain left to blame, the stagnant water has sharpened anger. For women, children, the elderly and even the dead, the cost is paid daily in risk and indignity. Until authorities move beyond tenders, verbal assurances and surface-level fixes, residents say, this road will remain a pool of civic apathy.
