New Delhi, Aug 24 - The capital Monday continued to reel under the effects of Friday's two-hour downpour -- trees and branches blown down during the storm were still lying on the roads and traffic lights were non-functional, leading to traffic snarls and accidents.

While the civic agency claimed to have cleared out the mess from the storm, the scene Monday morning showed a different story. Fallen trees and branches clearly blocked carriageways on busy roads.

Delhi Mayor Kanwar Sain decried this, saying that 'the clear-up operations should have been done on an emergency basis, irrespective that it was the weekend'.

'Our horticulture department undertook a survey of all roads in our jurisdiction. Wherever there was a problem the trees should have been cleared. Still there may be areas like on public works department (PWD) roads or New Delhi Municipal Corporation roads where residents are facing problems,' Sain told IANS.

But on one of the main roads under the jurisdiction of the MCD, many branches lay on south Delhi's Outer Ring Road in front of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus, leading to accidents and four-kilometre-long traffic queues.

A motorcylist who was squeezed between a fallen branch and an auto rickshaw on the other lane took a hard fall on the stretch as he was going towards Panchsheel Park.

The auto rickshaw driver, who stopped and dragged the branch off the road as passersby helped up the fallen rider, said: 'I have been seeing fallen branches all the way from Janakpuri.