CP chaos back as renovation starts

Connaught Place will go back to being a mess from Tuesday, with redevelopment work set to start. And it’ll stay that way till April 2012, the deadline for completion of work.

Connaught Place will go back to being a mess from Tuesday, with redevelopment work set to start. And it’ll stay that way till April 2012, the deadline for completion of work.

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The 75-year-old market was a mass of building rubble and traffic jams for most of last year, cleaning up only in time for the Commonwealth Games. Now, half the carriageways will once again be shut as work starts on four new subways (Panchkuian Road and Barakhamba Road), on an underground service

corridor in Middle Circle and on the four radial roads connecting the Outer, Middle and Inner Circles. Also, left-over façade restoration will be done.

“We have given them (NDMC) the green signal to start work from tomorrow. Congestion is expected in and around CP for the next 240 days,” said Satyendra Garg, joint commissioner of police (traffic).

While NDMC said Middle Circle would be available for parking, Garg denied this.

CP traders claimed they’d neither been consulted, nor given their approval. “We faced huge losses earlier... but because of the Games, we cooperated. This time, we won’t allow them to disrupt our business,” said Atul Bhargava, president, New Delhi Traders’ Association.