Delhi PWD seeks road over Ridge in Sangam Vihar

PWD plans a survey for a bypass road in Sangam Vihar, sparking environmental concerns over tree loss and forest encroachment amid accessibility promises.

New Delhi

Delhi’s ridge act as the city’s ‘green lungs’, activists said. (HT Archive)

The Public Works Department (PWD) will soon initiate a survey of trees falling on the alignment of a planned five-kilometre-long bypass road, over forest land, in Sangam Vihar, senior officials said. The corridor is proposed from the Sangam Vihar T-point near the shooting range up to J Block.

While planners argue that the corridor will vastly improve accessibility for over a million residents of the colony, environmental activists raised concerns that it may set a bad precedent by allowing infrastructure projects through forests and ridges.

A senior PWD official, who did not wish to be named, said that an agency is being hired to undertake a 30-day survey to assess areas of impact. “The corridor will closely move along the habitation boundary of Sangam Vihar and it will become a bypass, providing alternate access route for lakhs of residents,” the official said.

Sangam Vihar is an unauthorised colony that encroaches upon the Southern Ridge and the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. The diversion of forest land in the Ridge area will also need clearance from the Ridge Management Board.

Officials said that around 125,000 square metres will be assessed to prepare a plan, including the need for felling or transplanting trees.

“The survey will help us finalise an alignment that may cause the least disturbance to trees. The geocoordinates of all impacted trees will be recorded and the agency will also coordinate the submission of tree cutting permission from forest department and environment ministry. The bids for the survey exercise have been invited and process will be wrapped up in a month,” the official said.

Last year, the government submitted to the National Green Tribunal that around 33 unauthorised colonies were “encroachments on forest land” in Sangam Vihar. The classification of areas as forest also prevented the installation of sewer lines in these colonies, it had said.

Chandan Kumar Choudhary, Sangam Vihar MLA, said that he has been pushing the project with both PWD and the environment ministry for the past year. “It is finally starting to take shape. The four-lane bypass corridor will start from the shooting range and end near the Bandh Road. It will vastly reduce congestion and improve lives of lakhs of residents who spend hours in narrow congested lanes. The 5km road will transform the region,” he said.

The report advocating for the project, accessed by HT, reads: “Construction of peripheral road may result in increase in accessibility to employment opportunities outside the Sangam Vihar area. A large number of people especially women and aged avoid travelling outside when travel conditions are not congenial.”

The PWD official cited above said that the road will reduce travel time for locals from around 25 minutes to just 5-6 minutes.

Environmentalists, however, were against it.

Bhavreen Kandhari, an environmental activist, said, “The proposed bypass in Sangam Vihar raises serious concerns, as it risks further encroachment into Delhi’s already fragile Ridge and forest areas, which functions as the city’s ‘green lungs’. Improving connectivity cannot come at the cost of irreversible ecological damage, especially in a city already grappling with severe air pollution and shrinking green cover. The project must be evaluated not just as a road project, but as a long-term environmental decision.”