Work on the grade separator, which includes a 780 metre-long flyover and a 532 metre-long underpass, began in May 2007. Its initial deadline was October 11, 2008, but at present only 48 per cent of the project has been completed.

PWD minister Raj Kumar Chauhan, who inspected the flyover on Tuesday, was told by engineers that the project faced further delays. “I have asked them to speed up work on the project, and to get more people to work on it. Our priority is to finish it well before the Commonwealth Games,” Chauhan said.

The project has been dogged by delays after basic services like water pipelines, telephone lines and NDPL lines had to be shifted. The total project cost is Rs 153 crore, of which Rs 14 crore has been allocated merely for the shifting of these services. A major water pipeline from Wazirabad that supplies West Delhi could only be shifted on Monday. “Two major DJB pipelines supplying West Delhi pass through here. We didn’t have space to shift one of these pipelines as the land was occupied by six shops and two residential houses leased out by the MCD. These properties were recently cleared, enabling us to shift the water pipeline,” a senior PWD engineer said. A total of 11 DJB connections falling in this area had to be shifted.

Other than these, nearly 20 NDPL cables were passing through this space. Two of the discom’s transformers and one district office also had to be relocated. Only 30 metre of road space was available, as the rest was encroached upon by vendors in Azadpur. It took the PWD nearly a year and a long judicial battle to clear this encroachment.

Another problem that the PWD faced was the simultaneous construction on the DMRC’s Vishwavidyalaya-Jahangirpuri line, which runs parallel to the underpass. “The DMRC finished their work in the area only in October last year, when we finally began working on the underpass,” the engineer said.