A waterlogged street at Abhiyanta Nagar in Patna. Picture by Jai Prakash

Surendra Prasad Singh has a beautiful home but he rarely plays host because the road in front of his house is inundated throughout the year.

“I never call anyone home. What impression would they get when they see the road in front of my house, which is always under water?” asked Singh, a resident of Abhiyanta Nagar road number 1.

Waterlogging might give a tough time to people during monsoon in other places. But not for Singh and other residents of localities like Abhiyanta Nagar, Magistrate Colony and Maurya Path. For residents of these areas, under the jurisdiction of ward number 2 of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC), sewage water on the roads is an unpleasant reality throughout the year.

The situation at Magistrate Colony is just as bad. Road number 2 looks like a stretch on the moon with crater-like potholes. These are filled with dirty water all the time.

“Unplanned development of the colony is the reason for the perennial waterlogging,” said Raghunandan Prasad, secretary, Magistrate Colony Co-operative Society.

The civic representative of the ward, councillor Dipak Chaurasiya, however, blamed Bihar Rajya Jal Parishad (BRJP) for the problem, as it had failed to repair the faulty water supply system in the area.

“The water supply network in the area is faulty and has a number of leaks. There are at least 20 such leakage points. Whenever we try to repair one point, a leak develops somewhere else,” he said, adding that the BRJP is entrusted with logging the leaks.

BRJP officials on the other hand blamed the leakage problem on technical snags. “We are installing 29 new tubewells in Patna. But the water supply pipelines are old and develop leaks when water passes through them at full force,” said a senior BRJP official, adding that work was underway to develop a new water supply system in Patna under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

While the blame game continues, residents are the ones who suffer.

He and his neighbours have a slight glimmer of hope though. At present, workers of the rural works department are engaged in laying new drainage pipes and repairing leaks in the area.

Once they complete their work, residents can hope to not wade through dirty water anymore.