Delhi CM Atishi opens to public new six-lane flyover in Punjabi Bagh

Delhi CM Atishi inaugurated the 1.12km Club Road flyover, aiming to save 40,800 hours daily for commuters and reduce pollution equivalent to 65,000 trees.

Chief minister Atishi on Thursday formally inaugurated the six-lane Club Road flyover in Punjabi Bagh, west Delhi — a 1.12km structure between the ESI-Basaidarapur Metro station and the Najafgarh drain.

Atishi with AAP leaders Rakhi Birla and Shiv Charan Goel. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)

Throwing the structure open to the public, Atishi said the flyover will help commuters skip three traffic signals, “thereby saving 40,800 hours daily for the people of Delhi”, and stated that it will help reduce pollution by saving commuters from burning 1.1 million litres of petrol and diesel every year.

“The total saving in terms of pollution is equal to planting 65,000 trees. This is the 39th flyover that has been inaugurated since the Aam Aadmi Party came to power 10 years ago. Delhi has never seen infrastructure expansion of flyovers, underpasses and elevated roads at such speed as we have delivered,” she said.

Public Works Department (PWD) officials said the new flyover is part of a project to create an elevated corridor between the Punjabi Bagh and Raja Garden, and will benefit hundreds of thousands of commuters travelling to or from Punjabi Bagh, Basai Darapur, Paschim Vihar, Raja Garden, and Moti Bagh, among other areas in west Delhi.

Neeraj Singh, who commutes through the Punjabi Bagh area, said, “It will be a huge relief for the people of west Delhi who were dealing with traffic snarls for the past two years.”

Anita Verma, a resident of Dilshad Garden, said, “I need to cross Punjabi Bagh to go to work every day, and it has been a nightmare for the past two years. No work takes so long as this flyover has taken, making traffic worse than before because of the delays. I hope the situation will improve now.”

To be sure, the Club Road flyover has been ready since August 2024, but was not inaugurated for several months as the forest department did not give permission to chop or transplant a tree along the median of the structure, PWD officials said. The tree still remains at the median, but PWD has now barricaded it for the safety of commuters — similar to another flyover between Anand Vihar and Apsara Border.

PWD officials said the Punjabi Bagh project still requires permission from the forest department to fell 33 trees — this includes one on the median of the Club Road flyover. The project had earlier missed its December 2023 and February 2024 deadlines because utilities such as high-tension power cables and a water pipeline in the area had not been shifted by the respective agencies.