Indian Express 10.08.2010
Old City will have to wait for revamp
Express News Service Tags : old delhi revamp, delhi Posted: Tue Aug 10 2010, 01:49 hrs
New Delhi: A good opportunity to grant a new life to the ailing Old City through the Commonwealth Games was apparently frittered away when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) announced its inability to do so this April. Though refurbishing the Old City was one of the main projects of MCD’s initial blueprint, its Rs 12-crore plan to restore the lost glory of the area has failed to make any headway.The MCD claims the decision to hold the project till the Commonwealth Games is a “realistic one, considering the vastness of the project”.
“Redeveloping Old Delhi is a huge task and we realised the work will not be complete in time for the Games. Hence, we have now decided to take it up only after October,” said Krishan Kumar, Deputy Commissioner, City Zone. The corporation also claimed that “lack of funds and multiplicity of authorities” forced it to withdraw the redevelopment plan from the Games’ list.
In April this year, Municipal Commissioner K S Mehra, who is also the chairperson of the MCD Heritage Society, had echoed a similar sentiment and added that it would “rethink” the proposed Old Delhi projects once the Games were over. The MCD Heritage Society was formed to conserve Old Delhi.
In the pipeline for almost eight years, the ambitious Old Delhi redevelopment plan has come to a standstill — barring some urban design work such as upgrade of roads and street-scaping on SP Mukherjee Marg, Subhash Marg and Jawaharlal Nehru Marg.
Also, shopkeepers at SP Mukherjee Marg and Azad Hind Market, near the Red Fort, have been given a new design “based on the lines of Janpath” and they are now aligning their shops accordingly.
At present, there seems to be no word on other integral Old Delhi projects such as removal of overhead cables, traffic decongestion plan, conservation of havelis in the Walled City, and the shifting out of wholesale markets from the area.
