Reg­u­lar­iz­a­tion of 1,639 colon­ies at the earli­est: Govt
PTI, Jun 24, 2010

NEW DELHI: Delhi gov­ern­ment said it has accel­er­ated the pro­cess of reg­u­lar­iz­ing 1,639 unau­thor­ized colon­ies which were given pro­vi­sional reg­u­lar­iz­a­tion cer­ti­fic­ates in 2008. Delhi fin­ance min­is­ter A K Walia said the Gov­ern­ment has been striv­ing hard to com­plete all the form­al­it­ies to ensure formal reg­u­lar­iz­a­tion of all the 1,639 colon­ies at the earli­est. He said soon the gov­ern­ment will present all the required doc­u­ments to Delhi High Court seek­ing per­mis­sion to reg­u­lar­ize the unau­thor­ized colonies.

Urban devel­op­ment depart­ment will take up cases of more than 1,000 unau­thor­ized colon­ies for formal reg­u­lar­iz­a­tion in Octo­ber. Walia held a high level meet­ing today to dis­cuss the issue which was atten­ded by top offi­cials of vari­ous agen­cies includ­ing MCD, DDA, Plan­ning and Urban Devel­op­ment depart­ment. Dir­ect­ing the agen­cies to provide basic civic amen­it­ies at the earli­est, he said lakhs of people resid­ing in these colon­ies must get bene­fits of proper drink­ing water, sew­er­age and power.

Walia said the Sur­vey of India has cleared all 118 colon­ies which came up on DDA land. The Forest Depart­ment has also been instruc­ted to exam­ine the cases of 86 such colon­ies which fall par­tially on forest land. The depart­ment has been told to sub­mit its final report by first week of July. Offi­cials said out of 1639 colon­ies, digital data of 1,115 colon­ies have been pre­pared. This will facil­it­ate the MCD to pre­pare final lay­out plans in respect of all unau­thor­ized colonies.

The MCD has fur­ther been told to pre­pare final lay­out plans in respect of 309 colon­ies which have been cleared by the Sur­vey of India.

T3 road pro­jects still stuck on slow lane
Source: Express India
Dated: 29^th June 10

New Delhi With almost a fort­night left for the com­mer­cial open­ing of Indira Gandhi Inter­na­tional Airport’s Ter­minal 3 and less than a hun­dred days left to go for the Com­mon­wealth Games, road con­nectiv­ity to the new ter­minal seems to be stuck in a tight lane. While there are many plans — both short term and long term — to reduce traffic con­ges­tion, none will be in place before Septem­ber, let alone the July 15 start of com­mer­cial flights from the new ter­minal.
After a sur­vey in 2007, the Cent­ral Road Research Insti­tute (CRRI) had recom­men­ded five roads to meet the traffic require­ments of the Indira Gandhi Inter­na­tional Air­port. Of these, two pro­jects — the North­ern Access Road and Dwarka Under­pass — were to be com­pleted in the first phase of air­port devel­op­ment to coin­cide with the open­ing of Ter­minal 3. The two pro­jects are still under­way, and efforts are on to meet the Com­mon­wealth Games deadline.

Two short-term schemes were later added to cater to Ter­minal 3, and are at present being imple­men­ted on National High­way 8 and the Mehrauli-Mahipalpur stretch.

Dwarka under­pass
The road is being developed by the Delhi Devel­op­ment Author­ity (DDA) and has already missed its April dead­line. The under­pass, how­ever, pro­poses to provide a segreg­ated route for Dwarka-bound traffic. Instead of a round­about, the junc­tion will have a traffic sig­nal for airport-bound traffic. With a lot of work left to be done, the DDA has now pushed the dead­line to July 31.

North­ern access road
A tun­nel road from the Palam-side to Ter­minal 3, under Run­way 28 – 10, is being built for the Air­ports Author­ity of India by the Delhi Metro Rail Cor­por­a­tion. The road will start at the sig­nal junc­tion near the Mehram Nagar round­about close to the Hanu­man Temple, near the road lead­ing to the domestic air­port, pass under the defence and air­port oper­a­tional areas to reach Ter­minal 3. The pro­ject was star­ted in April after the Dir­ect­or­ate Gen­eral Civil Avi­ation gran­ted per­mis­sion and Run­way 28 – 10 was shut down for main­ten­ance. Accord­ing to sources, a 250-m stretch of the 360-m tun­nel under the air­port has been com­pleted, while excav­a­tion for the entire 170-m stretch in defence area is almost over. The AAI and DMRC are con­fid­ent of wrap­ping up the pro­ject by mid-September.

Mehrauli-Mahipalpur road
At present, two junc­tions on this stretch under the Mahip­alpur fly­over — between Mahip­alpur Road and NH-8; and at the round­about near Radis­son Hotel — exper­i­ence acute traffic jams due to vari­ous bot­tle­necks. The cas­cad­ing effect leads to long queues on all approach roads. The National High­ways Author­ity of India is improv­ing the junc­tions with a dead­line of June 30 while the Pub­lic Works Depart­ment is car­ry­ing out pos­sible widen­ing to ensure a 2+2 lane configuration.

How­ever, Delhi Chief Sec­ret­ary Rakesh Mehta told News­line that the road widen­ing pro­jects could not be imple­men­ted due to lack of space. “While the other pro­jects are on, the Mahip­alpur road widen­ing faces vari­ous bot­tle­necks as there is no space to widen the road,” Mehta said.

Cent­ral spine
The cent­ral spine, or main approach road, of Ter­minal 3 is a 4+4 lane — expand­able up to 10+10 lanes — sup­por­ted by a net­work of ser­vice roads to take care of all access and cir­cu­la­tion require­ments. The net­work has been con­struc­ted keep­ing the peak traffic require­ments for 2016. To segreg­ate ped­es­trian and vehicu­lar flow and facil­it­ate seam­less integ­ra­tion with vari­ous con­nect­ing points, the new ter­minal would offer pas­sen­gers a sky­walk and a ped­es­trian tun­nel lead­ing to the ter­minal build­ing from the car park, Metro sta­tion and taxi stand.

At present, nearly two lakh people travel to and from the IGI Air­port daily, adding up to nearly 95,000 vehicles. The only access point now is from NH-8.