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Sheila let down on road repair deadline

By Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI SEPT. 30 . Despite the best of efforts of the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, to make the roads spick and span by September 30, the civic agencies involved in the road repair work have failed her. With the deadline coming to an end today, many roads in the Capital continue to be in a sorry state.

It was in August that Ms. Dikshit had set the September 30 deadline for civic agencies to identify and repair roads which had been damaged due to the unprecedented monsoon rains this year. She had asked the agencies concerned to carry out a survey of the damaged roads and draw up a blueprint to ensure that things were back to normal by the end of September. But that has not happened and Ms. Dikshit faces embarrassment for not keeping her promise. Once again it is the bureaucracy which has let down the Chief Minister and misled her into believing that everything was going on fine and at a good pace. And the Public Works Department (PWD) should also take the blame for having failed to complete the entire work of road repair or dense carpeting within the given time frame.

Although, the PWD has been far ahead of MCD in this job, but its performance has fallen below expectations. The PWD had allocated a huge chunk of Rs. 18 crores for repair of the entire Ring Road and the job has been almost done except for a few places. But some of the main streets and major crossings are still crying for repair and these have not caught the attention of the PWD. In fact, many patches on the Delhi University-Kingsway Camp stretch where Metro rail construction is going on are also in a bad shape. Similarly, the stretch between Rohini and Pitampura main road is also in poor condition and so are the roads inside Rohini where road repair work has been going on at a snail's pace.

On the other hand, the roads in East Delhi areas are also in bad shape and do not seem to have come to the notice of the civic agencies. It is understood that PWD has completed almost 80 per cent of the road repair work while the MCD is way behind with only 50 per cent work having been completed. In fact, the MCD has been right through maintaining that the September 30 deadline was not practical and it needs to be extended as a lot of work needs to be done before the actual repair begins.

The MCD, which has been entrusted with repair of 2.5 lakh sq meters stretch spread over 392 roads will take another 15 to 20 days to repair the roads. In fact, it is understood that the deadline for the MCD has been extended by 10 days but it is doubtful if it will complete the task within that period also. However, the Chief Minister maintained that work was going on fine and there had been a delay of a few days as the rains got prolonged. "I have been roaming all around the Capital and seeing for myself the state of roads. Things are improving at a fast pace. Also, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has been told to repair the stretches falling in its areas where construction work is going on, as the condition is pretty bad. I had a talk with the DMRC Managing Director, E. Sreedharan, and he assured that corrective measures were already being put in place,'' she said.

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