Patiala mayor drowns in online flak

PATIALA: The unbroken spell of rain since Saturday evening brought mayor Sanjeev Sharma “Bittu” under a torrent of socialmedia criticism from his inundated ward. Even his house was under water.


As rainwater entered houses in Ward 42, the constituents flooded WhatsApp groups with videos to embarrass Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh for what his home city had become in just one night between Saturday and Sunday.

The most damning videos were from the Patiala mayor’s ward. In one of the clips, men stood waist deep in water stranded outside their houses.

A resident posted: “Seeing the pathetic condition of the mayor’s ward, you can guess the condition of other parts of the CM’s city. Even the mayor’s house was flooded in only a few hours of rain.” The residents, later, gathered to raiseslogans against the Patiala municipal corporation and its mayor for their failure to solve the problem of flooding in two years of their term.

Notably, even the executive engineer of the district drainage department was draining water from his house all Saturday evening. Some other officials were worked buckets and chains with family and neighbours the entire night. These were the scenes in almost all the wards. The lowlying areas were worst-affected and water from there could not be cleared till Sunday noon. The bus stand and Tripuri remained under two feet of water till Sunday evening. Flooding was worse near Bhasha Vibhag, book market, under-bridge, and parks in SST Nagar and a few nearby areas. Mayor Sanjeev Sharma could not be contacted despite repeated attempts but senior deputy mayor Y S Yogi said: “The rainwater was drained overnight and all streets were clear on Sunday morning, except in parts such as the bus stand, where we faced a technical problem. In a few areas, drainage pipes are yet to be connected to broader pipes.”