A waterlogged street at Yamuna Nagar in Attakulangara in Thiruvananthapuram following pre-monsoon thunderstorm on May 30, 2026.
| Photo Credit: File
The sound of falling rain no longer seems soothing to residents in downtown Thiruvananthapuram.
Over the years, residents and businesses in the city’s prime commercial area, comprising Chalai, Thampanoor, Pazhavangadi, and East Fort localities, have come to dread the rains.
When pre-monsoon showers pummelled the city on Saturday, the residents in Pazhavangadi, for one, went into firefighting mode.
The stormwater overwhelmed the network of drains. The muddy silt-laden runoff backed up into the streets, flooding homes, swamping shops, and turning roads and footpaths into streams, inconveniencing residents, traders, motorists and pedestrians alike. The scenes of water rushing over roads and sidewalks were a staple of television news broadcasts that day.
Mini, who owns a stall in front of the Pazhavangadi Ganapathy temple, says she has rarely experienced flash flooding of Saturday’s magnitude. Ms Mini has owned the store since 2014.
Passengers take refuge on elevated surfaces at the KSRTC bus stand at East Fort following severe waterlogging caused by pre-monsoon thunderstorm on May 30, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
FILE
“Wavelets triggered by traffic on the flooded roads inundated shops, damaging stock. Cleaning operations cost working hours and high-priced labour”, Ms Mini told The Hindu.
Local residents said that the toxically polluted Amayizhanjan canal, a noxious black open sewer that doubles as a convenient trash dump and a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes, which courses through the heart of the city, overflowed, raising the spectre of diseases, including leptospirosis.
Delayed civic response
With canals and drainage systems backing up, polluted water flooded homes and businesses in the locality. They alleged that the civic authorities’ response to the flood was seriously wanting. “Municipal workers arrived late. No Corporation higher-ups visited the flooded locality,” a resident said.
He said Saturday’s flooding was neither the first nor the last, and climate change has spurred heavy downpours that are increasingly overwhelming the city’s clogged network of drains and canals.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-controlled Thiruvananthapuram Corporation had drawn flak for severe waterlogging caused by a relatively mild pre-monsoon spell. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) Opposition in the council alleged that the Corporation’s pre-monsoon cleaning operation was markedly slack. LDF counsellors said the worst was yet to come. Flooding-affected urban residents took to social media to vent their anger.
Mayor V.V. Rajesh had told reporters that the Corporation alone could not be blamed for the flooding in Pazhavangadi. He said other departments were involved and called for joint action.
Last year, the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) had taken the Major Irrigation department to task for failing to execute 500 cleaning, desilting, and anti-clogging works along canals and drains crisscrossing the city.
(The writers, Sreenand M.S. and Karan Gopal, are interning with The Hindu Bureau, Thiruvananthapuram)
Published – June 03, 2026 07:36 pm IST
