Wazirabad bridge traffic woes: HC pulls up Delhi govt

The Delhi High Court has pulled up the AAP government for not taking any steps to ease the massive traffic congestion on the single-lane Wazirabad bridge, which is used for commuting between north and northeast area of the city.
It asked the Delhi chief secretary to ensure that the authorities examine the problem of commuters and look into the proposal for construction of a bridge.
"It appears that despite the gravity of the situation and extreme difficulty to commuters, the Delhi government and its Public Works Department have not moved to undertake planning for providing facilities to commuters," a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said.

The court said it was not open to pass directions on bridges and roads, etc, and that it was purely under the authorities concerned.
It was hearing a petition by an advocate seeking construction of a bridge or extension of the existing bridge at Wazirabad barrage, saying that lakhs of commuters are affected by it and it results in gross denial of 'right to live with dignity' to the citizens.
The court disposed of the petition saying that the decision taken shall be communicated to the petitioner advocate in four weeks and action taken thereafter.
The petition filed by advocate A Rasheed Qureshi had sought direction to the government to construct one or more bridges upstream to ease the traffic from Bhajanpura, Khajuri Khas, Sonia Vihar and other parts of north and north east Delhi.

It claimed that the single-lane bridge over river Yamuna is insufficient as lakhs of commuters are crossing it daily and it causes extreme inconvenience to them.