Colony conflict: Greater Kailash-II resident welfare association wants to shut gate on others

NEW DELHI: Resident welfare associations in the city are known to be obsessed with gates. Controlling access to their territory, with a rag-tag band of poorly paid security guards, they often run foul of the very residents they claim to serve. But what the Greater Kailash-II RWA has been caught doing is unprecedented. They were installing a gate on a main arterial road leading to several south Delhi colonies without any approval from any authority. And what’s worse, more gates have been planned — none with any sanction from any government agency!
The gate that has got residents of many colonies — Chittaranjan Park to Alaknanda — protesting vehemently was to be erected on the left turn after Savitri Cinema. This road bifurcates GK-II and Chittaranjan Park and connects with several residential colonies in Alaknanda, up to Tara Apartments.
The sheer audacity of the move to illegally and whimsically block the access of thousands of residents has stumped people in the area. When a TOI team visited the spot on Tuesday, the iron bars on both sides at the entrance of Gurdwara Road indicated the abortive bid to wrest control of a busy public thoroughfare.
Residents are livid. “This is Talibanization of city planning. Everybody thinks that they can do what they want to without caring about their neighbours. Why don’t they erect a gate on Ring Road — that too is next to GK-II,” said Sudhir Vohra, an architect and urban planner who stays in Chittaranjan Park.
The apex residents’ body of Chittaranjan Park, East Bengal Displaced Persons (EBDP) Association, dashed off letters to lieutenant-governor Tejendra Khanna, the PWD principal secretary, the south Delhi municipal commissioner and the area councillor. “We will fight this tooth and nail. The stretch where this gate is coming up is one of the major roads connecting GK-II, Chittaranjan Park, Alaknanda and DDA flats in Kalkaji,” said Snigdha Roy, EBDP vice-president.
“It’s not their property but a general public road. Any RWA can put up a gate anywhere if this is to be allowed and it will become a free-for-all. We will complain to the local councillor, police, PWD and MCD. It is already so difficult to reach our houses, particularly during festive occasions like Durga Puja. There is a traffic jam almost every day and this will cause a greater problem. There are buses that ply on that road. We strongly oppose this and the GK-II RWA has not approached anyone from our RWA on this matter,” said Ashok Mittal, general secretary of Mandakini Enclave RWA.
Blocking arterial roads is against the law and no gates can be arbitrarily installed even within colonies. While a no-objection certificate has to be sought from police, road-owning agency, MCD commissioner, fire department and other agencies, no gate can be erected without all residents agreeing to it. The Gurudwara Road is more than 60 feet wide and no gate can be installed here anyway. “The construction is illegal as it is being carried out on an arterial road with a width of more than 60 feet (18.28 metres). No permission has been sought from PWD. We have complained to the police after the matter came to our notice,” said a senior PWD official.
The GK-II RWA told TOI that the additional commissioner of police of the area had agreed to ‘inaugurate’ the gates. “We informed the police of our plans and were encouraged as it is for improving security of the area. Around 300-400 cars have got stolen from the colony and miscreants keep entering the area at night, making it unsafe. The gates will be manned and are aimed at restricting those who thunder through this road at night and cause accidents,” said Ashok Bagga, president. The RWA’s argument was that they would close the gates at night for fixed hours only.
ACP (southeast) Ajay Chaudhry, however, said that since the RWA had taken no permission from the municipal corporation and there was no agreement among the local RWAs, the work had been stopped. The police often look the other way in such cases because restricting access makes their job easier.
The residents have a battle on their hands since the GK-II RWA is planning to install three other gates — near Don Bosco School, M block and S block. “We have till now managed to raise funds for four gates. We will construct more later. The process is at an initial stage right now,” said Raj Krishan Gupta, general secretary. In effect this would mean that residents will have no easy access to markets, restaurants, schools, gyms, ATMs, Jahapanah forest, pathology labs etc.
Under the rules, an RWA has to obtain a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the local police and traffic police before applying to the deputy commissioner of the corporation concerned. Also, a gate can be installed only where the right of way does not exceed 18.3 metres. It must be an internal road of the colony with no buses plying on it. The rules also state that gates should not be erected on main/arterial roads but on side roads leading inside a colony and that gates on roads connecting two or more colonies should not be closed.
“Security is one issue but closing a main road is not fair. We appreciate their concern for security within the colony but they can’t block arterial roads,” said Upkar Singh, president of Nilgiri Apartments RWA. “Other RWAs will also start replicating this, making life difficult for everyone else. CR Park would end up blocking access to Kalkaji, while Alaknanda could block the way to Faridabad. This is absurd.”
: Blocking access to public roads shouldn't be allowed
Security is a legitimate concern for colonies and residents’ welfare associations. However, it cannot be allowed to extend to blocking access to public roads, particularly arterial ones. Unfortunately, the police too have not just overlooked this growing trend but actively encouraged it. Shutting out colonies by putting up gates cannot become a short cut to the police’s job of providing basic security to residents of the city. It is a shame that even court orders on this issue have been flouted with impunity. It is time they were enforced. Where colonies put up gates, the least they can do is to pay for them being manned rather than locking them up at night.