The work for the Dhaula Kuan extension plan to check perennial traffic congestion in the area will soon begin, with the project expected to be awarded this month.
According to officials, the ministry of road transport and highways is awaiting a nod from the Delhi Police after it floated tenders for the project. “We are expecting that the work will be awarded in the next couple of days,” an official said on the condition of anonymity.
Last month, while speaking to News18, union minister Nitin Gadkari had said the ministry has got the nod for defence land on the stretch and the work is expected to start soon.
Why is this extension necessary?
Commuters travelling from Delhi airport to the city know about the traffic congestion in Dhaula Kuan. The bottleneck next to the police station, where the four-lane road turns into two, causes the traffic to slow down during peak hours and worsen the situation.
Last year, Gadkari had said the police station will be removed and two additional lanes will be added to ease traffic flow. In January, the minister had said the Dhaula Kuan Road was designed only for 50,000 passenger car units (PCU) but has to deal with 2 lakh.
Asked if the project will be awarded before the model code of conduct kicks in, the official said it will be done much before that.
Gadkari, who is an MP from Maharashtra’s Nagpur, frequently travels to Delhi. He has been vocal about the traffic congestion near the airport and had planned a number of projects around it.
In 2015, he sanctioned a study to find the reasons behind the problem plaguing several parts of the national capital, after he was impacted by the jam at Dhaula Kuan.
“I bang my head… as I get stuck quite often at Dhaula Kuan in southwest Delhi for 40 to 45 minutes while coming from or going to the airport,” Gadkari had said in Lok Sabha.
In 2019, the ministry completed a Rs 270-crore project to make the stretch between Dhaula Kuan and Indira Gandhi International Airport free of traffic signals. But even after all these efforts, the congestion continued to upset him.
“I know and travel in Delhi very little. But the stretch around Dhaula Kuan is the part that gives me the most pain whenever I come from the airport,” he had said.
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