Mercedes stranded on flooded road for 2 hours: Ghaziabad man sends legal notice to GMC; seeks Rs 5 lakh for repairs | Noida News

GHAZIABAD: The owner of a Mercedes car has sent a legal notice to Ghaziabad municipal commissioner seeking Rs 5 lakh in compensation after his car broke down on a waterlogged road in Sahibabad during heavy rain on July 23 morning. Amit Kishore, a resident of Vasundhara’s Sector 11, said he bought the vehicle, a Mercedes GLA 200D, for Rs 60 lakh in 2018. He claimed the car was working fine and developed a mechanical snag after it was stranded on a waterlogged road in Sahibabad’s Lajpat Nagar for nearly two hours that day.The car eventually had to be towed to a service centre after it stopped while Kishore was driving home around noon.“It just wouldn’t start again. I had to arrange a crane to take it to a service centre in Noida, which has said that the repair would cost an estimated Rs 5 lakh,” he told TOI. Kishore, a social activist, earlier filed petitions in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) demanding the removal of encroachments on drains and regular drain cleaning in Vasundhara.“Your failure to fulfil your statutory duties under the Municipal Corporation Act, Public Health Acts, and Environmental Protection Laws, as well as your breach of duty of care owed to the residents, makes you liable for financial, physical, and mental damages caused to my client and others similarly affected,” The legal notice, served to the municipal corporation through Kishore’s lawyer, read.It adds that if no action is taken within 15 days, Kishore would initiate legal proceedings.While the civic body is yet to issue an official reply to the notice, municipal commissioner Vikramaditya Malik told TOI that the applicant would have to prove that his car broke down due to waterlogging. “If the waterlogging caused his vehicle to break down, why didn’t the same happen to other vehicles parked on the same street? On July 23, there was excessive rainfall, and IMD issued alerts as well. It led to waterlogging across NCR, but there were no other reports of vehicle breakdowns caused solely by it,” he said.Sahibabad residents, however, have backed Kishore. “Waterlogging is a major problem in trans-Hindon areas, especially Indirapuram, Vaishali, and Vasundhara. Waterlogging persists in these areas due to encroached, clogged drains and delayed, ineffective cleaning by the municipal corporation. The sanitation staffers simply leave sludge along the roadside until rains wash it back in,” Roy Tapan Bharti, who has lived in Vasundhara’s Sector 16 for 30 years, said.