Water Pipelines Relaid A Month Ago, But University Road Still Awaits Restoration

New Delhi: While taking stock of the poor condition of roads in Delhi, chief minister Atishi and former CM Arvind Kejriwal visited a broken road in Delhi University's North Campus on Thursday. Commuting on University Road has turned into a nightmare for both students and staff members of late.Locals claimed that Delhi Jal Board had laid sewer lines and water pipelines along one side of the road nearly a month ago, but the surface was unpaved till now. Public Works Department officials said that tenders had already been floated for the restoration of this road earlier this month. They, however, refused to share further details. According to rules, only the road-owning agency concerned can carry out the restoration work on it.The 1.5-kilometre road starts from Mall Road and ends near a petrol pump on Vishwavidyalaya Marg. One side of University Road is unpaved and has many potholes. As this portion is unmotorable, people going towards Civil Lines, Timarpur, or the campus side from Khyber Pass red light are forced to drive on the remaining space."Due to the reduced width of the road, there is a major problem of congestion. A few days back, an electric bus got stuck in the unpaved area. The road often gets waterlogged too. DJB recently carried out the work of laying the sewer lines, but after that, the dug-up area was left ignored," claimed Rajendra Mehta, a resident on University Road."The road is in a very bad condition. It will be repaired soon. Delhiites' son Arvind Kejriwal is now back among the people. Under his guidance, the stalled work of Delhi will be completed at double the speed," said Atishi in a post on X.Kejriwal also took information from local MLA Dilip Pandey about other broken roads in his assembly constituency. "Now that I have come, you don't worry. All your pending work will start again. We just came to inspect the road passing in front of DU's North Campus. There is a water pipeline under this road. The road has broken due to this pipeline. This road is used a lot by people. I have talked to Atishi about the repair of this road. Now, this road will be repaired soon," said the former CM."Apart from this, we will inspect all the broken roads inside Delhi and get them repaired," he added.Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva alleged that it would not be an exaggeration to say that the condition of Delhi's roads under Kejriwal's regime today was like what the roads in Patna were during Lalu Yadav's tenure from 1990 to 1997. "In every part of Delhi, there are stretches that make people wonder whether there are potholes on the roads or roads in the potholes," he said. He further alleged that the condition of Delhi's schools, colleges, hospitals and markets was also in a shambles.