Authorities in a suburb of the Indian capital where many companies have offices and executives have their homes, ordered schools to close and urged residents to work from home on Friday after heavy rain brought widespread flooding.

Television news and social media platforms broadcast pictures of submerged vehicles on the flooded roads of Gurugram, a New Delhi satellite city that received 20 mm of rain in the 24 hours to late Thursday, the weather department said.

This month, authorities in the tech hub of Bengaluru in southern India had to use tractors to rescue residents of upmarket housing estates after torrential rain flooded several parts of that city.

Environmentalists blamed poor town planning and climate change for the Bengaluru flooding. (Reporting by Sunil Kataria in Gurugram and Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow; writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; editing by Robert Birsel)