Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India, visited the stretch of Barapullah drain near Bhogal Market in South Delhi to witness the operation of DM-80 Drain Master, a self-propelled amphibious excavator technology developed by M/s Cleantec Infra Pvt Ltd for the cleaning and desilting of Barapullah drain under the Waste to Wealth Mission, Office of the PSA to the Government of India. Present during the visit were Dr. Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary, Office of PSA, Dr. Monoranjan Mohanty, Adviser, Office of PSA, Ms. Sakshi Mittal, Additional Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Mr. Binay Jha, Director, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Mr. P.C. Meena, Engineer-in-Chief, MCD (South), Mr. Dilip Ramnani, Engineer-in-Chief, MCD (East), Mr. Sudhir Mehta, Chief Engineer, MCD (South), and other officials from MCD, Office of PSA and Waste to Wealth Mission.
Cleaning of open drains in congested areas has always been a challenge in India because there is no or limited access for traditional equipment like Joseph Cyril Bamford (JCB) excavator, Poclain, etc. and human settlements on both sides of the drain with narrow passages make it impossible to dispose of the collected waste. The Barapullah drain in South Delhi is one such drain that is blocked at various locations with sewage, trash, and debris, resulting in foul odor, vector-borne diseases, unhygienic conditions, and flooding in the monsoons.
To address this critical problem, the Waste to Wealth Mission collaborated with South Delhi Municipal Corporation (now Municipal Corporation of Delhi) to jointly pilot an indigenous, customized excavator - Drain Master DM-80, designed and developed by M/s Cleantec Infra Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai. The DM-80 unit was selected to address the critical gap area of technologies for cleaning congested urban drains clogged with mixed waste including construction and demolition debris which are very hard to dislodge and remove.
It is a self-propelled, transportable, and amphibious machine with multipurpose attachments capable of removing 50-100 m3/day of waste and overcoming the limits of cleaning urban drains (with widths larger than 7 m) making it an important technology for use in urban areas in India.
The DM-80 unit was in operation for a duration of one year, during this period, Cleantec Infra operated the unit to clean and desilt approximately a 3 km stretch of the Barapullah drain starting from Sundial Park to Jangpura, removing approximately 3000 tons of waste in the process. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi provided supporting equipment for the disposal of the waste removed from the drain.
Appreciating the technology and efforts to clean the Barapullah drain, Prof. Ajay K. Sood said, “I am happy to see that the one-year pilot project with DrainMaster DM-80, which is a totally indigenous technology for cleaning urban drains, has proved to be a success. It exemplifies how S&T can address challenges in handling waste. This pilot project’s success at Barapullah Drain gives us the confidence to scaleup and implement such technologies to clean our drains across India.”
