HC puts RTR plan on hold till October 10

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Tuesday said that Public Works Department should not award the contract for the proposed three-lane flyover at Rao Tula Ram Marg till October 10, the next date of hearing.
A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Siddharth Mridul also asked the department to furnish a copy of maps and a scaled model of the proposed project so that the bench can understand the issue better.
"You are not going to award the contract till the next date," the bench said making it clear that if a mistake was committed earlier, it can't be allowed to get repeated.
The court's direction came after Public Works Department (PWD) admitted to having made a mistake in making only a three-lane flyover at RTR Marg in 2009, and said it had "succumbed to the pressure of some influential people" of the area who were not willing to part with the side lanes of their colony in order to widen the main Outer Ring Road at that location. "So our flyover had to be cut by half," the counsel for PWD told the high court.
The court is hearing a plea by various associations representing the residents of Vasant Vihar who have opposed the PWD's decision to build a three-lane flyover parallel to the one already there at an estimated cost of Rs 211 crore.
The associations have sought that a six-lane flyover be built at the same location by demolishing the existing flyover.
, while the PWD plans to build a three-lane elevated road from Munirka to Signals Enclave here which will also run parallel to the RTR flyover. The associations maintained while they are not interested in stopping the project, "we do not want the earlier mistakes to be repeated".
During the proceedings, the associations also contended that the PWD has the "consistent habit" of stopping flyovers just before a traffic signal so that a contract can be awarded for another flyover at a later stage.
The associations have sought quashing of the notification by the PWD inviting tenders for constructing the three-lane flyover as well as directions to authorities concerned to give in detail the studies carried out by them pursuant to taking the decision to build a new flyover. Their petition also sought directions to the Centre and Delhi government to ascertain reasons behind designing of the single-lane "faulty flyover" at RTR and take appropriate action against those responsible for the same.