Part of Shastri Park flyover to be opened in August: Kejriwal

nNEW DELHI: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday reviewed the progress of the Shastri Park flyover project a day after his visit to Chandni Chowk to inspect the progress of the redevelopment work there. “The work on this project is almost complete. One portion of the project will be inaugurated in August. The others will take another 1.5 to 2 months. The sanctioned cost was ₹303 crore, but we expect to finish it with less than ₹250 crore. The savings will help us,” he said on Friday.

The Shastri Park project, said a senior official in the public works department (PWD), consists of two flyovers work on both of which had started in February 2019 and supposed to have ended in March 2020.

Work on the project was around 70% complete, but stopped after large groups of labourers fled the city, fearing attacks during the northeast Delhi riots, which claimed 53 lives and left more than 500 injured.

By the time, the situation crawled back to normal and labourers started to return, the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 had been imposed, the senior official said.

The Shastri Park junction flyover is to be constructed at 700 metres long and will be a twoway flyover, with each carriageway to be around 10.5m wide.

On Thursday, the chief minister had visited Chandni Chowk, his first non-covid project inspection in four months, and announced that the long-delayed redevelopment project in the Walled City would be inaugurated for the public in earlynovember.