One cracked bridge

In its hurry to complete the Commonwealth Games projects, the MCD overlooked some projects that needed immediate attention.

In its hurry to complete the Commonwealth Games projects, the MCD overlooked some projects that needed immediate attention. The result of this is that on Monday, nearly 70,000 commuters had to take longer routes to work and back when a portion of west Delhi’s Janak Setu caved in.

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In 2009, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had chalked out a plan to repair the crumbling structure which had worn out over the years.

However, more than two years later, the work has still not started on the 30-year-old flyover which was built just before the Asian Games.

Had the civic agency conducted the repairs works, Monday’s incident might not have occurred.

According to the civic agency, a 5 to 7-inch slump was noticed in the structure of the flyover. The carriageway had to be closed down with the traffic police barricading the entire passageway. Traffic was diverted to other roads which led to huge traffic snarls in west Delhi.

While one carriageway leading towards Tilak Nagar was shut completely, movement of heavy vehicles such as buses and trucks was restricted on the other carriageway.

The situation is likely to aggravate in the coming few days as it will take at least a week for the repair work. “We received a call around noon about the problem. There was no traffic at that time and the traffic coming from south towards west was diverted through Pankha road. During peak hours, there is always heavy traffic on the flyover and the next few days are going to be difficult for commuters. The engineers are investigating the cause of the damage and will tell us the time it will take to repair it,” said Premnath, deputy commissioner of police, (southern range) traffic.

The civic agency which maintains the flyover has approached the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) to rectify the slumping. “We have approached the CBRI to carry out a technical feasibility for restoration. We will take further action on receipt of advice from the CBRI experts. We are already on the job to repair the damaged part and hope that the fault will be rectified at the earliest,” said Deep Mathur, director, press and information, MCD.