Harvinder Singh is peeved by the way authorities are not taking care of the Pankha Road, which is a vital link between Janakpuri, Uttamnagar, Dwarka and other areas to Dhaula Kuan. He says, “Although DDA has made the flyover on Pankha Road above the railway lines but none is bothered to improve the condition of Pankha Road. I stay in Janakpuri and everyday I face problems in reaching my office at Connaught Place.

Although the new flyover has given us a breather but the authorities should have ensured in repairing at least the approach road. Half of Pankha road is full of mud due to the rainy season. This portion of the road is not metalled at all. As soon as one reaches Sagarpur, buses keep on standing there blocking the way of cars. There’s total chaos at this place during morning peak hours.

“In morning one wants to reach office with a fresh mind, but due to traffic snarls at this place, once energy levels just goes down in the morning itself. The road space available is so less that only one bus can move properly on the road, which if repaired properly is as wide as the Ring Road. If some vehicle develops a snag then there’s a huge traffic jam in the morning. Another problem is of stray cattle that just come in front of cars from out of the blues. It’s not that traffic cops are not aware of the problem, but they don’t do anything about it.

“There are lots of fruit vendors who have encroached land on the road. Due to them one lane has totally become unusable. Although the authorities has done a good job with the flyover, but it nullifies the effect because of the bad approach road. And why authorities are turning a blind eye to it, I don’t know?”

I spoke to ACP (Traffic/West) S.S. Sandhu who said, “Regarding the bad maintenance of roads, we keep on asking the concerned civic authorities to repair them, but no one cares. We just keep on writing to them and sending reminders. About encroachments, from time to time we keep on taking action against encroachers.”

I have been to that point and experienced the traffic snarls personally. Even the cycle track of Pankha road needs to be taken care of. Although due to consistent pressure by traffic cops, MCD repaired it long time back but again its position has come back to square one. According to Dr C.M. Bhagat, also a Janakpuri resident, “The traffic police should ensure that cyclists should use this cycle track as the number of cyclists on this road is very high. It’s an accident prone zone for cyclists.” Well, it is high time that government needs to have a re look on the condition of this road as Pankha Road is a very important corridor.