Delhi LG instructs agencies to complete pending tasks to decongest 77 traffic corridors
Jul 05, 2022
New Delhi [india], July 5 : With an aim to decrease the congestion in and around the city and ease the flow of traffic, Delhi Lieutenant Governor, VK Saxena on Tuesday instructed all stakeholder agencies to complete all pending tasks related to the decongestion of 77 corridors for improving the flow of traffic within three months.
Agencies including PWD, Forest Deptt., Home Deptt., DUSIB and DDA were amongst others that were directed by the Lt. Governor.
Upon being informed that most of the work pending for as long as 2019 related to the removal of electric poles and power transformers, the LG wondered as to how such petty and innocuous works could get embroiled in red-tape of exchange of letters between different departments and needed to be discussed at the level of the LG itself.
On the issue of similar years-long delays in the removal of identified religious structures, jhuggis and trees, Saxena expressed displeasure and directed officials to ensure total inter-departmental coordination and completely do away with the habit of conveniently and unjustifiably using Court orders as alibis and excuses for non-performance.
According to sources, the LG asked the Chief Secretary who was present in the meeting to sort out all pending inter-departmental issues and fix a timeline for the completion of each task at hand. The LG also instructed that it be ensured that the timelines are met and in case they are not, responsibility be fixed.
As per LG House sources, "Of the pending 119 tasks, as many as 58 were required to be acted upon by the PWD. Removal of trees at 08 places, jhuggis at 7 places and religious structures at 17 places apart from minor tasks like replacement of power transformers and poles and 5 tasks related to non-availability of adequate parking outside banquet halls, were inordinately delaying decongestion on important stretches that included Mehrauli-Gurgaon road, Mehrauli-Badarpur Road, Ring Road (Vijay Nagar to Burari Chowk), Loni Road (from Shahdara GT Road to Loni Border), etc.''
The LG issued instructions that any ongoing activity in this regard should be stopped forthright and proactive intervention by authorities concerned should ensure that any such activity is nipped in the bud before it starts, in future.
He underlined that he would personally monitor this and any deviation from the directions will be taken very seriously.
With regards to the matter of 'Religious Places Committee' that decides upon removal of religious structures, it was decided that a meeting of the committee will be held on every last working day of the month and all pending cases will be decided upon therein.
In the matter of parking at sites of banquet halls, it was decided that DDA will handover identified lands to MCD on institutional or notional rates and the MCD in turn would, instead of getting into the existing revenue sharing model, involve the association of banquet halls and get them to construct multilevel parkings at their own cost in lieu of, the land provided by MCD to them.
Notably, the Task Force teams for each traffic range were created in January 2017 with an objective to act on major travel corridors in consultation with all stakeholders to improve traffic flow. The Task Force teams had identified 77 corridors of around 400 KMs for improvement.
