Residents wade through a waterlogged street at Gudari Bazar in Darbhanga on Friday. Picture by Mukesh Kumar Jha

Intermittent rain for around seven hours since Thursday night has led to waterlogging in most colonies in Darbhanga town, throwing life out of gear.

It rained intermittently from around 10pm on Thursday. By the time the rain stopped, at 5am, knee-high rain water had collected in colonies, including Bengali Tola, Rahmatganj and Lakshmi Sagar. Residents had to wade through it while parents hesitated to send their wards to school.

Residents said choked drains had led to the waterlogged streets and lanes. The civic body, most of them alleged, does not clean drains before the rains, and that leads to difficulties during monsoon.

Lakshmi Sagar resident Raj Kumar said: “Knee-high water in residential colonies and business areas after intermittent rain has exposed the civic body’s shoddy preparedness for the rains. The workers do not work and even if they do, it is in areas where influential people live.”

Mayor Gauri Paswan, however, put the onus of the waterlogging on the town’s structure. He told The Telegraph: “Darbhanga is bowl-shaped and waterlogging is quite common in several residential colonies in the rainy season.”

He added that talks are on with a non-government organisation to improve and set up a sewage and drainage system in the town.

But the residents are not sold on it. Octogenarian Kedarnath Chaudhary, a resident of Bengali Tola, said: “For us (residents of Bengali Tola), the civic body is defunct. The drainage system is choked at several points and our roads are waterlogged even if it rains a little.”