Drainage and Sewerage (Sections 235–280)

The block of provisions an examiner labels "Drainage and Sewerage (Sections 235-280)" of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 is, in the live statute, a graveyard. Every section in this range now reads [Omitted], deleted en bloc by the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 1993 (Act 67 of 1993), Section 96, with effect from 1 October 1993. The water-supply, drainage and sewage functions they once housed were hived off to a separate undertaking and finally to the Delhi Jal Board. For an aspirant this is a trap and a gift in equal measure: the trap is citing a repealed section as if it were good law; the gift is that the repeal itself, its constitutional backdrop and the original scheme are the real testable content. This note reconstructs what Sections 235-280 contained, locates them precisely within Chapter XII, explains the 1993 repeal and the present statutory regime, and flags the doctrinal points that survive the deletion.

Where Sections 235-280 sit in the Act

The first thing to get right is location. Sections 210 to 273 form Chapter XII of the Act, titled "Water Supply, Drainage and Sewage Disposal", organised under sub-headings: General (ss. 210-212), Water Supply (ss. 213-238), Drainage and sewerage (ss. 239-249), Disposal of sewage (s. 250) and Miscellaneous (ss. 251-273). Sections 274-283 belong to the next chapter, Chapter XIII (Electricity Supply). So the examiner's framing label "235-280" deliberately straddles three sub-heads and two chapters. Sections 235-238 are in fact the tail of the water-supply sub-head; the true drainage-and-sewerage core is 239-250; and 251-280 spill into the miscellaneous and electricity provisions. Recognising this saves you from mischaracterising, say, Section 235 (a water-pollution power) as a drainage provision. The structural placement mirrors the functional architecture of the Corporation, where obligatory and discretionary functions under Sections 42 and 43 set the frame for these operational chapters.

The decisive fact: the entire range is omitted

The single most important point, and the one most aspirants miss, is that none of Sections 235 to 280 is in force. The official India Code text of the Act records each of Sections 210 to 273 as [Omitted] by the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 1993 (Act 67 of 1993), Section 96, with effect from 1 October 1993; Sections 274-283 of Chapter XIII were omitted by the same amendment. The bracketed marginal notes are preserved in the bare Act only as a historical signpost, each followed by the omission citation. Any answer that quotes "Section 239 provides that public drains shall vest in the Corporation" in the present tense is wrong. The correct formulation is that Section 239 formerly so provided, before its 1993 omission. This is the same drafting technique seen across repealed municipal provisions, and it tests whether a candidate reads the statute as amended rather than from an outdated commentary. Treat the topic, therefore, as legislative history plus the successor regime, not as live black-letter law. A useful discipline is to write every reference in the past tense and immediately pin it to the omission: "Section 240 formerly placed drains under the Commissioner's control until its omission with effect from 1 October 1993." Examiners reward candidates who can both reconstruct the repealed text and explain its present status, and penalise those who treat a struck-out provision as enforceable. The omission was a wholesale deletion of the chapter, not a piecemeal pruning, which is why the entire 210-273 band carries an identical omission footnote keyed to Section 96 of the 1993 amendment.

What the drainage core originally provided: vesting and control

Reconstructing the repealed scheme, the drainage-and-sewerage sub-head opened with Section 239 (Public drains, etc., to vest in the Corporation), which vested all public drains, sewers, ventilating shafts, pipes, appliances and the appurtenant sub-soil in the Corporation, and Section 240 (Control of drains and sewage disposal works), which placed those works under the Commissioner's control. These twin provisions are conceptually identical to the vesting-of-streets logic elsewhere in municipal law: the public asset becomes corporate property held for public purposes. Section 241 (Certain matters not to be passed into municipal drains) prohibited discharge of chemical refuse, steam, petroleum and similar dangerous matter into municipal drains, a public-health safeguard. The operational power to compel connection sat in Section 242 (Application by owners and occupiers to drain into municipal drains) and the duty to drain in Section 243 (Drainage of undrained premises), under which the Commissioner could require an owner of undrained premises to construct drains connecting to a municipal drain.

Construction, combined drainage and private drains

The construction-control provisions followed. Section 244 (New premises not to be erected without drains) barred erection of new buildings without adequate drains, dovetailing with the building-control chapter. Section 245 (Power to drain group or block of premises by combined operation) let the Commissioner order a single combined drainage system for a block of premises where separate drainage was impracticable, apportioning cost among owners, a classic municipal-efficiency device. Section 246 (Power of Commissioner to close or limit the use of private drains) and Section 247 (Use of drain by a person other than the owner) regulated private drains and shared use. Section 248 (Sewage and rain water drains to be distinct) mandated separation of foul sewage from storm-water drainage, the foundational engineering principle of a separate sewerage system. Section 249 (Power of Commissioner to require owner to carry out certain works for satisfactory drainage) closed the sub-head with a residual works power, and Section 250 (Appointment of places for the emptying of drains and disposal of sewage), the lone "Disposal of sewage" provision, empowered fixing of sewage outfall and disposal sites.

The miscellaneous and electricity provisions in the 251-280 band

Beyond the drainage core, the "Miscellaneous" sub-head supplied the enforcement machinery now also gone. Section 251 forbade connection with water works and drains without permission; Section 252 barred erecting buildings, railways or private streets over drains or water works without permission; Section 254 let an owner lay pipes and drains through another's land; Sections 256-258 gave the Commissioner power to execute works after notice, to affix ventilating shafts, and to examine and test defective drains and cesspools. Sections 259-269 dealt with the New Delhi Municipal Committee and Military Engineer Services, Delhi Cantonment, bulk water supply and inter-agency sewage cost-sharing. Section 272 required work to be done by a licensed plumber, and Section 273 prohibited certain acts. The 274-280 tail belongs to the omitted electricity chapter (Chapter XIII). The point for examination is that this entire enforcement apparatus, like the substantive vesting, ceased to operate from 1 October 1993. Officers who once wielded these powers are described in the note on officers and establishment.

Why the chapter was repealed: the 1993 amendment

The repeal was not an accident of consolidation; it was deliberate functional surgery. The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 1993 stripped water supply, drainage and sewage disposal out of the Corporation's remit because those services were being reorganised into a dedicated utility. The 1993 amendment also omitted the related committee references, deleting the words concerning the "Delhi Water Supply and Sewage Disposal Committee" from Section 112 and omitting Sections 117 and 118. The legislative judgment was that a city the size of Delhi needed a single specialised water-and-sewerage authority spanning the whole National Capital Territory, rather than fragmenting these networked, capital-intensive services across the Corporation, the New Delhi Municipal area and the Cantonment. The repeal thus reflects a policy shift from a multi-function municipal body toward a sectoral parastatal model, a recurring theme in Indian urban governance and a favourite of examiners testing the difference between a municipal corporation's object and constitution and a special-purpose statutory board.

What replaced it: the Delhi Jal Board

The vacuum left by the omitted Chapter XII was filled first by the Delhi Water Supply and Sewage Disposal Undertaking and then, decisively, by the Delhi Jal Board Act, 1998, which constituted the Delhi Jal Board on 6 April 1998 by incorporating the earlier Undertaking. The 1998 Act establishes a Board to discharge the functions of water supply, sewerage, sewage disposal and drainage throughout the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Critically, it carries forward the vesting logic of the repealed Section 239: all drains that were municipal drains under the control of the Delhi Water Supply and Sewage Disposal Undertaking, with their shafts, pipes, appliances and sub-soil, vest in the Board. So the legal effect of the old Section 239 did not vanish; it migrated. For a current legal opinion on a Delhi sewer dispute the relevant statute is the Delhi Jal Board Act, 1998, read with the Corporation's surviving building and sanitation bye-laws, not the dead Sections 235-280 of the 1957 Act.

Constitutional backdrop: Article 243W and the Twelfth Schedule

The repeal and the rebuild both sit inside a constitutional frame introduced by the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992. Article 243W empowers State legislatures to endow municipalities with such powers as may be necessary to enable them to function as institutions of self-government, including the performance of functions and implementation of schemes in relation to the matters listed in the Twelfth Schedule. Two Twelfth Schedule entries are directly on point: entry 5, "Water supply for domestic, industrial and commercial purposes", and entry 6, "Public health, sanitation conservancy and solid waste management", which encompasses sewerage. The constitutional design therefore contemplates these as municipal functions, yet the Twelfth Schedule is enabling, not mandatory: it permits a State to assign functions but does not bar assigning water and sewerage to a specialised board instead. The 1993 omission and the 1998 Jal Board Act are a lawful exercise of that latitude. This interaction between constitutional aspiration and statutory delivery is a high-value discussion point and links to the broader treatment of municipal functions in the note on the Corporation's wards, committees and zones. The deeper analytical move is to ask whether parastatal delivery weakens the self-government ideal of Part IXA: an unelected board running water and sewerage arguably dilutes municipal accountability, yet the alternative of a single capital-wide network managed by a city corporation whose boundaries do not cover the New Delhi and Cantonment areas is administratively awkward. The chronology is itself testable: the Seventy-fourth Amendment took effect in 1992-93, the DMC omission followed in 1993, and the Delhi Jal Board Act arrived in 1998, so the reorganisation rode the same wave of urban-governance reform that produced the Twelfth Schedule.

What survives in the Corporation's hands after 1993

It would be wrong to conclude that the Corporation has nothing to do with drainage. The omission of Chapter XII removed the water-and-sewerage service functions, but the Corporation retains its obligatory function of scavenging and cleansing of public streets and places, and of providing and maintaining surface and storm-water drains, under the general functions framework of Sections 42 and 43, and continues to enforce sanitary requirements through its building bye-laws and the public-health chapter. The practical division today is roughly this: trunk water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment lie with the Delhi Jal Board, while local surface drainage, storm-water drains within Corporation roads, and sanitation enforcement remain municipal. This is precisely the kind of overlapping-jurisdiction question that produces litigation over who is liable for a flooded street or a collapsed sewer, and why getting the post-1993 allocation right matters more than memorising repealed section numbers.

Doctrinal points and municipal liability

Even after repeal, the drainage topic carries durable doctrine. The vesting of drains in a public authority makes that authority the occupier responsible for maintenance, and failure to maintain can found liability in tort for nuisance or negligence, the principle running through the line of municipal-negligence authorities such as the Supreme Court's recognition in Municipal Corporation of Delhi v. Subhagwanti that a municipal body owes a duty of care over structures and works vested in it. Statutory powers to compel drainage of undrained premises (the old Section 243) and to insist on separation of foul and storm drains (the old Section 248) reflect the public-health rationale that survives in the Jal Board's modern functions and the Corporation's bye-laws. The recurring examination themes are therefore three: first, that vesting carries responsibility and hence liability; second, that public-health regulation of discharge is a continuing power, now relocated; and third, that the constitutional Twelfth Schedule is enabling rather than mandatory. Mastering these lets you write a confident answer on a topic whose statutory letter has been erased. For the broader fiscal context of how the Corporation funds its surviving sanitation duties, see the note on property tax levy, assessment and collection.