Barapullah Nullah elevated road work to continue

The work on elevated road over Barapullah Nullah, which will connect Commonwealth Games Village with Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, will continue despite the High Court declaring the expert committee, formed by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), illegal on October 30 and further asking ASI to issue notices to all 177 sites passed by the committee.

Barapullah Nullah project was also given a go-ahead by the committee.

Claiming that work can not be stopped even for 12 hours on the stretch, the Delhi government has issued internal orders to continue work here. The government will go to Supreme Court to “rehear the process”.

“The order does not say that we have to stop work on the stretch. We are going in for an appeal,” said Public Works Department (PWD) minister Raj Kumar Chauhan, who has been inspecting Commonwealth sites after Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit expressed doubts over on-time completion of several projects.

The High Court in its order held that the ASI had no right to form a committee without legal basis and permit construction within prohibited limits. The court also directed that all projects approved by the committee must be reviewed.

The matter went to court when Supreme Court lawyer Gaurang Kanth challenged the ASI committee’s permission to a private builder to construct within 88 metres of Humayun’s Tomb.

The six-member panel, formed by the ASI in 2006 comprising historians and town planners, got 150 requests for relaxation of norms from Delhi alone and approved 116 of them. It got over 400 applications from across the country.

Nearly 64 per cent of work on the Barapullah nullah has been completed and the PWD expects to complete the work by June.

The project, which started on October 24, 2008, is divided in two phases. First phase will connect Sarai Kale Khan to Mathura Road with road length of 2,654 meters. And the second connects Mathura Road to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium with road length of 2,080 meters. Apart from this, two loops near Sarai Kale Khan and slip roads near Lala Lajpat Rai Marg are also being constructed to facilitate traffic.