“They have not given official sanction for the project nor have they rejected it. Therefore, we are taking their silence as a go-ahead. We are already in the process of compiling our final plans and are to start construction of the project in another four months,” an official said.

The DUAC had earlier said the East-West corridor project, planned to make the east Delhi-Connaught Place stretch a 10-minute signal-free drive, “is difficult to implement”.

The Delhi government has been pushing the East-West corridor as 2010 Commonwealth Games project since 2004. The 7.9-km corridor, with a series of elevated and surface road sections, was to start from the Marginal Bund Road off NH-24 near the Akshardham temple and the Games Village site and end at the New Delhi railway station via Bhavabhuti Marg.

Estimated to cost around Rs 1,100 crore, the project was planned not only as part of infrastructure upgradation for the Commonwealth Games but also as a larger decongestion measure for east Delhi and the choked Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, Nizamuddin Bridge and Vikas Marg.

At a meeting on December 19 last year, the DUAC told the PWD that the project was “difficult”.

“The DUAC had objected that the elevated structures would not go well with Lutyens' Delhi and suggested that the entire corridor be on the surface level. The PWD proposal was to take 85 per cent of the project on an elevated level and 15 per cent on the surface level. Later, this would be increased by another 12-kilometre elevated road to Punjabi Bagh via Desh Bandhu Gupta Marg and Zakhira,” senior government officials said. DUAC feels the project is quite “complicated” and does not take into account the finer nuances of urban design and planning.