Paucity of funds delays road repair

For motorists, driving on many city roads has become a nightmare. Half the carriageway has been dug up, leaving little space for them to drive. The reason: Civic agencies began repair work but have still not finished it, leaving them in a mess.

For motorists, driving on many city roads has become a nightmare. Half the carriageway has been dug up, leaving little space for them to drive. The reason: Civic agencies began repair work but have still not finished it, leaving them in a mess.

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With the arrival of monsoons, the roads of Karol Bagh, Paharganj and Civil Lines are giving nightmares to locals, who say there is no place to park and hardly any space left for driving.

At Karol Bagh’s Vishnu Mandir Marg, the unified MCD had laid concrete on two sides of the roads and left a gap in the middle where cars keep getting stuck. The road is part of the road development project taken up by the MCD under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) scheme.

“The workers laid the roads and covered the drains, leaving no outlet. Now when it rains, the whole stretch gets flooded,” said a shop owner.

With promises of a smoother ride, the unified MCD in 2010 had started a project to build 19 important roads under JNNURM at a cost of Rs 44 crore. Two years down the line, 11 of them have either not been repaired or left incomplete.

Now that the projects have come under the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), a meeting of the works committee revealed that work could not be completed due to the paucity of funds. Under JNNURM, the Centre funds 35 per cent of the expenditure and the state pays 15 per cent. The remaining half is put in by the civic body doing the project.

“The corporation had no money to pay for the project but now there are plans to start work in a few weeks. Roads that were left incomplete will be completed first,” said Ravinder Gupta, chairman of NDMC's works committee.

Roads that have seen little work are Qutub Road, Madipur Road, Kalidas Marg, Vishnu Mandir Marg and Ganga Mandir Marg. Work on Futa Road, Ashok Vihar RUB Road, Shalimar Bagh Club Road, Anand Parbat and portions of Arya Samaj Road has not even begun.