Mumbai drain ready to move in? Items for a fully furnished house, entire autorickshaw found

Mumbai's pre-monsoon drain cleaning has pulled out household furniture, an autorickshaw and even a police barricade from eastern suburban nullahs this year. The recoveries show how Mumbaikars have turned the drains into landfills.

Mumbai's annual pre-monsoon drain cleanup has turned up the usual muck, but with it, also half a furnished house. You read that right. The nullahs of Mumbai have coughed up sofas, mattresses, tables, beds, refrigerators, and other luggage that could easily furnish a house. Not just household furnishings, even an autorickshaw and a police barricade were extracted during the annual pre-monsoon de-clogging drive.

Mumbai's civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), listed the unusual items recovered during Mumbai's annual drain-cleaning drive. The nearly intact autorickshaw, with its canopy partly melted by industrial waste, was recently lifted out of a drain along with a Saki Naka Police Station barricade and a wrought-iron BMC dustbin.

While it's known that silt and plastic choke the drains of Mumbai, the discovery of household items and an autorickshaw in the city's eastern suburbs show citizen apathy in India's maximum city. The recoveries reveal that Mumbaikars might be treating the nullahs, which open into the Mithi river, as their landfills.

Previously, too, items like an entire tree trunk of a coconut tree, and human skeletons have been found in the drains during the annual cleaning drive.

Such illegal dumping, which returns to haunt the city every year, poses a serious threat to Mumbai's flood preparedness ahead of the monsoon season, during which dozens lose their lives annually.

So far, only about 20% of desilting work has been completed in Zone V of Mumbai, which spans the eastern suburbs from Mulund to the Kurla-Chembur belt and includes 125 major nullahs and drains.

BMC's conservancy staff extracted the household goods from channels like the Safed Pool drain at Satya Nagar, nullah number 10 in Kurla, nullah number 14 in Saki Naka, and the Govandi-Mankhurd nullah.

In several stretches, particularly in Mankhurd and Govandi, the water had turned green from industrial waste.

MUMBAI DRAIN-CLEANING THREW UP TWO-WHEELERS, ALMIRAHS

BMC said on X that as part of pre-monsoon work, it is carrying out round-the-clock operations for cleaning rivers, streams, and removal of silt. In one such effort along the Eastern Freeway in the Mankhurd-Shivajinagar Dargah area, a culvert was cleared using a Super Sucker machine to remove accumulated silt, waste, and obstacles.

This is far from the first time bizarre objects have surfaced during Mumbai's nullah cleaning drives.

In previous years, BMC workers have retrieved everything from discarded two-wheelers, heavy appliances to construction debris and even larger household junk, including steel almirahs.

HOW BIG IS MUMBAI'S ANNUAL DRAIN-CLEANING EXERCISE?

The annual exercise covers over 300 major nullahs and hundreds of minor drains in flood-prone spots like Saki Naka, Kurla, Milan Subway, Hindmata, King's Circle, Vakola, and areas along the Mithi River.

Additional Municipal Commissioner (Projects) Abhijit Bangar inspected key sites in the L administrative division of the city. At Saki Naka Metro Station, which is a low-lying area, he reviewed systematic cleaning of underground drains and culverts using suction machines. Bangar instructed the installation of iron mesh at drain mouths to block debris and ensured sufficient workforce and machinery for the monsoon season.

All works, he directed, should be completed by May 31.

BMC said on X that it humbly appeals to Mumbai citizens not to dump solid waste, floating waste, or heavy materials into rivers or drains.

Enormous quantities of waste dumped into the nullahs and Mithi River slow down the cleaning process.

One can almost say that Mumbai's nullahs are stocked better than many markets selling second-hand items.

- Ends