Delhi: Pothole turns sinkhole on Outer Ring Road after 11 days of inaction

What started as a pothole turned into almost a big crater on a slip road along the Nehru Place flyover on Friday, triggering traffic jam on Outer Ring Road.

What started as a pothole turned into almost a big crater on a slip road along the Nehru Place flyover on Friday, triggering traffic jam on Outer Ring Road.

The caved-in service lane at outer Ring Road on Friday (Ravi Choudhary/ Hindustan Times)

Traffic on the stretch had remained affected since July 4 when a small portion of the road sunk. The Public Works Department (PWD), the road-owning agency, dug it up to know the reason behind the collapse.

No action on part of the officials for the past 11 days has now made it a traffic nightmare.

The stretch has GK-1 Enclave, Pamposh Enclave on the one side and Chittaranjan (CR) Park on the other. Vehicles from Panchsheel and headed towards Nehru Place, Ashram, New Friends Colony and Okhla take the route.

“They put up a signboard there only in the morning when the pit grew in size. This is an arterial road and cannot be left unattended,” said Rajiv Malhotra of GK-1.

Two separate road surface collapses on two service lanes running parallel to Outer Ring Road on either side added to commuters’ woes.

“When a portion of the road collapsed the first time, we dug up the patch and found a big cavity inside. We didn’t fill it up immediately because it could have led to a bigger cave-in if we would have done a temporary repair. A team is working to fix the problem. We believe a leakage from an MTNL manhole may have led to the road sink-in,” said a PWD official.