Mohali: Wednesday’s brief pre-monsoon shower brought Zirakpur and Mohali’s Airport Road to a standstill, exposing structural flaws in the region’s multi-crore drainage infrastructure and triggering widespread traffic snarls.The intersection beneath the Patiala Chowk flyover on the Chandigarh-Ambala national highway was heavily inundated, trapping commuters, pedestrians, and local shopkeepers. Simultaneously, high-profile stretches of Airport Road—developed at a cost of hundreds of crores as a regional showcase—were submerged under water, slowing traffic to a crawl.The recurring crisis prompted newly appointed Zirakpur municipal council president Gurpreet Singh Virk to openly question the accountability of the engineering agencies involved. Virk revealed that preliminary assessments suggest some drainage pipelines were fundamentally flawed, having been laid against the natural flow of water.“The rain has once again exposed the reality of our drainage arrangements. If the earlier development works had been carried out according to proper scientific and technical standards, this situation would not have arisen repeatedly,” Virk said.To fix the issue permanently, Virk proposed a new engineering correction to connect the chronic waterlogging point beneath the flyover directly to the main drain on Patiala Road. He announced a joint site inspection with the council’s engineering wing and officials from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) later this week to review past works and fix responsibility for any structural deficiencies.Local residents expressed deep frustration, noting that waterlogging on both the highway and Airport Road has turned into an annual feature. They criticised the persistent gap between administrative development claims and ground reality, demanding a permanent engineering overhaul instead of temporary fixes ahead of the monsoon season.
