Delhi PWD opens a feasibility study for a 61-km Najafgarh drain road

Delhi’s Public Works Department has asked consultants to test a road corridor along the Najafgarh drain from the Dhansa Border to the Yamuna outfall at Wazirabad. Officials confirmed the brief on Friday, 28 August. The Delhi government approved a 60.77-kilometre network in February at an estimated ₹453.95 crore, often rounded to ₹454 crore. Friday’s move is not a groundbreaking. It is the feasibility stage that decides what can actually be built.

The approved sketch has two main pieces. Roads would run on both banks from Chhawla to Basaidarapur for 27.415 kilometres each, or 54.83 kilometres in all. A 5.94-kilometre two-lane stretch would sit on the left bank from Jhatikra Bridge to Chhawla Bridge. The paved width in the plan is seven metres. Walking, jogging and cycling tracks are listed. A new bridge near the Dwarka Metro Depot is also listed. Named connections include the Outer Ring Road, Inner Ring Road, Shivaji Marg, Pankha Road, Urban Extension Road-II toward NH-9 (Rohtak Road), and Najafgarh Road.

The consultant must survey traffic, geometry, land and utilities, then offer three concept options with lane layouts, junctions and service roads. The brief also asks for utility-shifting needs, environmental and forest clearances, a cost range and a land-acquisition note. Parking inside an 800-metre band of the corridor is part of the integrated plan, as is a look at metro stations and other mass-transit links. Officials told Hindustan Times they want a street network, not a single 61-kilometre ribbon treated as one project. Elevated sections and at-grade sections will be chosen stretch by stretch.

Older files had studied an elevated or ground-level road from Kakrola Mor to Wazirabad. The new envelope is longer. It starts where the drain enters Delhi at Dhansa and follows it to Wazirabad. That is why the consultant language now covers rural west Delhi as well as the built-up west and north-west. The stated aims are shorter trips, less fuel, lower exhaust and a second path between west Delhi and Haryana.

₹454 crore for 61 kilometres is a thin number if large elevated viaducts are required. It is a plausible number if most of the work is a seven-metre paved road on existing drain banks with a few bridges. That is the point of the study. Until the three concepts and the clearance list exist, the February approval is a line on a map and a budget heading. The drain itself is still the drain. The road is still a consultant’s homework.