delhi

Updated: Sep 18, 2014 13:02 IST

A picture is worth a thousand words, it is said. Well, not if it’s photoshopped and tries to substitute work instead of just words.

A Delhi high court bench spotted doctored photographs of roads and pavements in Dwarka wiped digitally cleaned by the agencies to claim they had acted on complaints by residents about poor civic facilities in the sub-city. The photographs were submitted before a bench of Justice BD Ahmed and Justice Siddharth Mridul by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation and the DDA.

“This is photoshopped. When it comes to technology, I am a novice, but even I can say it is photoshop. Somebody has tried to brush this up,” the bench remarked.

Caught red-handed, the counsel representing the SDMC and DDA quickly scrambled a defence, saying there was no reason for them to smudge the details as they were working to clean up the areas on their own.

Law student and Dwarka resident Ebbani Aggarwal, who had filed the PIL seeking a direction to the civic agencies to clean up the area, told the bench that some work has been done but it was not as clean as the photos show.

Aggarwal had approached the court, saying the markets, roads, footpaths and open vacant land and other places in Dwarka ware full of filth, solid waste and construction material. In her petition, Aggarwal had said that the sorry state of affairs was a result of tussle between the south body and the DDA.

Apart from finishing the work before September 30, the next date of hearing, the court directed the agencies to submit fresh photographs.