New Year rush: Chaos grips Delhi’s streets

Senior traffic police officers estimated that between 11am and 7pm, nearly 150,000 people visited India Gate alone

Sushil Saini wanted to start 2025 with a scrumptious meal with his family, and decided to take them out to a nice restaurant in Connaught Place. What he did not envisage, however, was that he and his family would spend much of January 1 on the Capital’s roads, stuck in traffic serpentine traffic jams.

Revellers at India Gate in New Delhi on January 1. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)

“A drive from Indirapuram in Ghaziabad to Connaught Place usually takes 45 minutes. On Wednesday, it took more than two hours. Vehicles were moving at snail’s pace on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway and on the Ring Road, not to mention the C-Hexagon at India Gate and Ashoka Road. I now regret my decision to have a family lunch on the first day of the new year,” the businessman said.

The Sainis were among the millions of people across the National Capital Region (NCR) who hit the streets to celebrate the new year, leading to massive traffic jams and clogged roads in several parts of the city.

Senior traffic police officers estimated that between 11am and 7pm, nearly 150,000 people visited India Gate alone. The huge turnout of revellers left security and traffic personnel struggling to control the crowd and clear vehicular movement till late evening.

“To ensure the crowd did not spill on the India Gate circle and remained contained at the designated visitors’ spots, we had placed barricades and channelizers to guide vehicles and pedestrians,” said additional commissioner of police (traffic zone-II) Dinesh Kumar Gupta.

Deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi traffic district) Dhal Singh said, “We began dispersing people from India Gate and its adjacent lawns after 6 pm... We are not allowing anyone to park their vehicles and using cranes to remove vehicles parked at unauthorised places. The situation is under our control.”

Several residents also decided to start the new year with blessings from God, which resulted in the areas around some of the more popular temples — the Hanuman temple at CP, Jhandewalan, Birla Mandir, and Kalkaji Temple — getting chock-a-block.

CP Das, a resident of CR Park, said, “I had to go towards New Friends Colony. The travel time that is usually around 20 minutes took over an hour and a half. The entire road in front of the Kalkaji temple was full of devotees, and I was forced to take a detour via Lajpat Nagar.”

Other parts of the city where traffic was at a standstill included the Barapullah flyover, Aurobindo Marg, the DND Flyway, Vikas Marg Netaji Subhash Marg (Daryaganj to Red Fort), Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Marg, GT Road, and Lala Hardev Sahai Marg.

As the snarls on arterial roads grew larger, traffic police began diverting traffic to alternate routes, which soon themselves got choked, and many complained that they spent hours stuck bumper to bumper.

“The traffic in Delhi has become unmanageable… I spent more than one hour stuck in traffic only around India Gate,” said Sarvesh Singh, a resident of Mayur Vihar Phase-2 who was driving to Dwarka to meet some relatives.

Parts of Noida also recorded a gridlock. “The entire road near the Okhla bird sanctuary and Dalit Prerna Sthal was choked because of visitors, and traffic officials were unable to manage vehicular movement,” said Namita Relan, a resident of Sector 39.

Many took to social media to lament about the chaos, and to seek help from the traffic police. Some social media users also uploaded videos and photographs of jams and screenshots of Google maps, where most roads and routes appeared as crimson streaks, indicative of high traffic volume and delayed travel time.

“Almost 1 hour 30 mins Traffic Jam on NH-44 near Bakoli, Alipur. This has been the situation throughout the day,” Ankit Sharma, an X user posted.