The state urban development department has issued directives to the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) to take necessary action and reply to the concerns of citizens in connection to waterlogging and flooding in Vadodara.
It was on Monday that a group of concerned citizens had issued notices to the top brass of Gujarat government, VMC, Vadodara Urban Development Authority as well as heads of pollution control board blaming the authorities for “inviting floods” in and around the city.
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Acknowledging the letter mailed by the citizens, Anand Zinzala, joint secretary of Gujarat government’s urban development and urban housing department has directed municipal commissioner to take “necessary action and reply concerns” through an email sent on Wednesday. The group of citizens are building pressure on the authorities demanding concrete plan of action to avert floods in future. In the notice issued to the authorities, the citizens have wondered why no lessons are being learned from the “largely manmade disaster of waterlogging and floods” in and around the city following incessant rains that the city had witnessed on July 31 and August 1.
Blaming “deliberate inaction and lack of proactive administrative efforts” by VMC, the citizens had said it had led to immense misery for residents of Vadodara. The signatories which include environmentalists, urban planners, architects, botanist, zoologist, writer and biotechnologist have blamed deforestation and indiscriminate land-use changes in the catchment area of the Vishwamitri river as a prominent reason behind the floods.