95km of drains in city still uncovered, says minister

Riyan Ramanath V / Sep 11, 2024, 04:32 IST

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95km of drains in city still uncovered, says minister

Bhubaneswar: Out of the 1,907.7km of drains in the state capital, 95km remain uncovered, housing and urban development minister Krushna Chandra Mohapatra informed the assembly in a written reply on Tuesday.
Out of the total length of uncovered drains, 27km are internal drains and fall in wards/localities, the minister said, while replying to a question from Jeypore MLA Tara Prasad Bahinipati.The minister also told the assembly that two persons have died after falling into open drain in the last seven years.
Mohapatra’s reply revealed that BMC controls 1,380km of drains. These are internal drains. Another 360km of internal drains falls under the public works department while 65km comes under the administrative control of Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) and 345km under National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The BMC also has control over 68.2km of main drains, which are known as natural drainage channel.
“The 27km of open internal drains will be covered, for which provisions have been made in the current financial year. The covering work will be over by December,” the minister told the House.

In June, after a nine-year-old boy fell into drain number 5 and got swept away, investigation revealed that nearby residents used the drain as a passage to shuttle between two localities — Kharavela Nagar and Satya Nagar. People used it for daily commuting. The BMC constructed a barricade in front of the mouth of the drain to prevent people from accessing it.

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