Title - Heavy rain disrupts life in Mumbai

Mumbai:
Life in Mumbai was thrown out of gear following heavy rains which flooded roads and disrupted train traffic. According to the police traffic on a number of arterial roads slowed to a crawl following water-logging.“Traffic on both the Eastern and Western Express Highways are slow since morning and there are traffic jams,” a traffic police official said. At many places traffic signals also stopped functioning after water entered and damaged their circuits adding to the traffic mess.Train traffic was hit since morning with tracks being flooded at several places. Trains on the Central Railway and its Harbour Branch were the worst affected, officials said. Tracks were flooded at several places like Chinchpokli, Vikhroli, Sion and Masjid, according to sources. However, skeletal services were being run to avoid inconvenience to people. The trains were however packed with people as many rushed home early from work, officials said.Train services were relatively normal on the Western Railway though trains were running slow in the morning, officials said. Towards late afternoon trains slowed due to poor visibility and water logging on the tracks, officials said.The only good news from today’s downpour was that the reservoirs supplying Mumbai were filling up ahead of schedule. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said all the lakes supplying water to Mumbai were more than 50 per cent full after just one month of rains. Later today one of the lakes, Tulsi, began overflowing.Elsewhere in Maharashtra, the rains were having an adverse impact on the population. According to the disaster management cell at the state secretariat major flooding has been reported in Kolhapur town and across the Konkan region.