June new deadline for Rambagh flyover

ibune News Service

Srinagar, February 3

The state administration has now set June as the new deadline for the Rambagh-Jehangir Chowk flyover.

Instead of bringing relief to commuters, the project has not only inconvenienced the locals and tourists, the shopkeepers too are crying hoarse.

The Valley’s largest flyover, once completed, is expected to ease traffic snarls in the summer capital. The project is funded by Asian Development Bank.

The 2.5-km-stretch ofthe flyover project was announced with much fanfare by the government in 2009 but the work started finally in September 2013 with a three-year deadline for its completion. Since then, the project has missed several deadlines.

“I doubt that it will be completed by June. The project has only brought miseries to all. This is the prime road stretch of Srinagar where traffic from several places, including the airport, merges. The traffic is now being diverted through nearby residential areas. There is no let up in jams. Shopkeepers, whose units were demolished, have been shifted to caged complexes near Rambagh and Jehangir Chowk. They are doing no business,” said Abdul Rauf, general secretary of the Traders’ Federation, Exhibition Road — a body that had opposed the shifting of shopkeepers to shopping complexes.

Abdul Rashid, a displaced shopkeeper, said: “My shop was at a prime spot that bustled with people but now nobody comes to us at the shopping complex. And the shopkeepers whose shops were not demolished are doing no business because the traffic has been diverted from Rambagh to Jehangir Chowk.”

Raghav Langer, chief executive officer, J&K Economic Reconstruction Agency, which is executing the project, said the state had last week imposed a further penalty of Rs 2 crore on the contractor, Simplex Infrastructure Limited, after being fined Rs 1.25 crore in October last year. He said the flyover was expected to be motorable by June this year.

So far, the authorities have only been able to make the stretch from the Amar Singh College area to Ram Bagh/Barzulla motorable for one-way traffic.