Two civil bodies, the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) and the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), have washed their hands off the responsibility to lay sewer lines in Delhi's slums, filings before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) show.

Both bodies have told the NGT that it is the responsibility of the other to lay the sewers. Consequently, 675 slum clusters in Delhi remain with no sewers.

While the DUSIB has said that laying sewer lines is DJB's job, the latter has maintained that it cannot build sewage treatment plants in those areas without DUSIB first laying that very network.

The Bench of Chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, and members Dr. A Senthil Vel and Dr. Afroz Ahmad is hearing a fourteen-year-old case filed by the Nizamuddin West Association tracking the sewage flowing through the Defence Colony Drain and the Barapullah bridge into the Yamuna.

DUSIB's affidavit, sworn by its Chief Engineer VS Fonia, says its work in slum clusters covers pavements, storm water drains, and public toilet complexes.

When it comes to sewer lines, the affidavit states that it does not provide for the laying of sewer lines or pipes in the said Jhuggi Jhopri bastis/ clusters and that the same are to be provided by the Delhi Jal Board (DJB).

DJB's filings tell the NGT the opposite - that the complete elimination of sewage from these drains cannot happen without DUSIB laying the collection network first. Between these two positions, nothing has been built.

DUSIB's own division-wise data, covering all 675 clusters across all 12 of its divisions, shows where the sewage goes instead, into storm water drains and nallas (sewers).

Sewage from the roughly 680 public toilet complexes DUSIB does maintain drains into DJB sewer lines where those exist and into septic tanks where they do not.

The household sewage of the people living in these clusters has nowhere to go.

DUSIB was brought into the case in August 2025. Three tribunal directions followed but the body failed to respond.

The tribunal then imposed costs of ₹25,000. The affidavit verified on March 24 is the Board's first filing in over seven months as a party, and it arrived saying, in effect, that the problem belongs to someone else.

That someone else is DJB. Its report shows 17 of 43 identified drains have been successfully trapped and diverted. Twenty-two more are under execution.

But the two drains causing the greatest damage to the Defence Colony Drain catchment remain untouched. The drain originating from Mehrauli, Chhatarpur, Saket and Dakshinpuri carries 17 million litres of sewage per day. The Saidullahjab drain carries 23 million litres. Together they account for 40 million litres of untreated sewage daily, and both pass through the Forest and Morphological Ridge, where laying any infrastructure requires statutory clearances.

DJB has written to three authorities seeking those permissions. None have responded. Treatment plants for these two drains are now targeted for March 2028, if the approvals come.

Into this already crowded picture walks the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, carrying a contradiction of its own.

In October 2025, MCD's Superintending Engineer SD Tomar told the NGT that "all accessible openings and entry points are now secured" along the Defence Colony Drain.

Abhishek Dutt, a former local councillor whose constituency includes Defence Colony, went to the drain months later with a camera.

The GPS-tagged photographs taken on March 9 and March 13 showed sheet barricades propped on uneven ground, gaps visible at the base, and the open drain sitting accessible below.

His application to the tribunal calls MCD's sworn statement "in absolute contravention to the ground reality."

The drain's condition, Dutt's application states, is not merely a structural problem.

The wire mesh installed to trap waste at the entry point has itself become choked with accumulated debris. The stagnant sewage beneath produces hydrogen sulphide and ammonia. Residents of C Block and D Block of Defence Colony live with the smell and the gases year-round. Children, the elderly and those with respiratory conditions bear it without relief.

MCD's response to all of this was a fresh affidavit stating it had floated a tender for de-silting the drain the day after the tribunal directed it to report progress. The tender itself carries a completion period of 12 months. MCD has told the tribunal the work will be done by June 15. No contractor had been awarded the contract when the affidavit was filed.

In a report filed in January 2026, DJB committed to the tribunal that all 43 drains will be intercepted and all 34 sewage treatment plants commissioned by December 2028.

On April 1, the NGT Bench will look at what fourteen years of litigation has produced - a tender without a contractor, letters to three authorities without replies, a drain that a former councillor photographed wide open five months after MCD said it was secured, and an affidavit from a statutory body responsible for Delhi's slums confirming it has never laid a sewer line in any of them.

The Yamuna, which all of this is meant to clean, continues to receive what these agencies have not yet resolved.

Let the defecation trippingly flow.