'I might not make it without a boat...': Shashi Tharoor gives Delhi L-G a shoutout amid deluge

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor praised Delhi’s Lt Governor VK Saxena for his prompt response to the deluge outside his home in the capital that saw an 88-year-old rain record being broken on Friday.  

Tharoor lauded Lt Governor VK Saxena for his quick response after the MP in a post in X shared a video showing the street outside his residence submerged in waist-deep water.

"Amazed and impressed that this tweet elicited, within minutes, a phone call from the Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi himself! Shri VK Saxena was courteous and responsive and explained the constraints on effective action arising from the division of responsibilities between Union and State Governments," Tharoor wrote.

He commended Saxena as a "conscientious civil servant" and appreciated his pledge to address the issue of clogged drains before the next major rainstorm.

In Tharoor's earlier post, residents could be seen navigating the flooded area with sticks to avoid open sewers. He said that clogged stormwater drains caused the flooding and that electricity was cut off at 6 am to prevent electrocutions. Despite the chaos, Tharoor quipped, "Warned my Parliament colleagues that I might not make it there without a boat. But the city managed to pump water out of the roads and I did arrive in time!"

Delhi experienced nearly 230 mm of rainfall between 8:30 am on Thursday and 8:30 am today, marking the highest 24-hour rainfall in June since 1936. The heavy rain brought much of the city to a standstill, with visuals showing inundated roads, long traffic jams, and submerged vehicles.

A portion of the roof of the departure complex at Delhi Airport's Terminal 1 collapsed early in the morning, resulting in one death and six injuries. With the monsoon expected to arrive in Delhi by the end of this week, according to the IMD, the city is bracing for more rainfall.