Kherki-Daula villagers back new sector residents’ demand for e-way connectivity
A group of residents from the new sector (sector 79-113) met representatives of Kherki-Daula village on Sunday afternoon to discuss road access to Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway from the Northern Peripheral Road (NPR). After the meeting, both parties said they will make collective efforts to ensure residents get access to the link road, broken on October 1, and eventually direct access to the expressway.
Two days after the sector residents made a black-top 150-metre-road that gave then direct, toll-free access to the expressway, the concessionaire Millennium City Expressway Private Limited (MCEPL) had dug it up and barricaded it. The link road was built on private land with permission from the landowner. On October 3, the MCEPL had opened another 150-metre-long village road, connecting the Kherki-Daula village with the service lane of the expressway. This compounded local traffic woes as bypassing cars and trucks caused inconvenience to villagers.
Villagers, on Sunday, assured residents that they will struggle together in getting the link road opened again, but will work within the legal framework of the constitution and taking the MCEPL into consideration. The villagers, who have toll-free access to the expressway, agreed to cooperate to ensure traffic from the NPR, popularly called the Dwarka Expressway, does not do not enter the village.
“When the NPR was closed on October 1, we thought that there would be relief to villagers as trucks and cars won’t pass through this area. On October 3, when MCEPL started the village road, cars started using this and it has now become difficult for us to walk around in the village,” village resident Monu Yadav said.
On Sunday, residents and villagers agreed that it was impossible to stop cars from passing through the village, so the only solution was to ask the MCEPL to remove the jersey barriers on the link road.
“With cars going inside our village to take the NPR, our kids are not being able to go out and play. Electricity metres were broken and fights have taken place between villagers and sector residents on why they were taking this route. The ultimate decision is to get the jersey barriers removed, but by taking the toll concessionaire into consideration,” another Kherki-Daula resident Pawan Kumar said.
Talking about how they plan to proceed, residents and villagers said they would together clean the debris of the broken black-top link road.
“All of us will first clean the broken 150-metre link road. After all the debris is cleared, we will ask the administration to intervene and ensure that we get access to the NPR,” Sector 89 resident Ajay Chauhan said.
During discussions, the residents also asked villagers to back them in getting direct access from the NPR to the expressway, like they did in January this year when the NPR wall was broken by the Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP).
Sector 92 resident Praveen Malik said, “We want their (villagers’) support for access to the NPR; it cannot happen without keeping the villagers. People in the village are also fed up with pollution, dust and the number of cars going through their homes.”
Meanwhile, villagers have said they would not take down the signboard on the village road that reads ‘Not a common entry point’. “We are not going to take this board down. This was put up to deter commuters from going through our village, but it hasn’t worked,” Yadav added.