Altering an earlier order, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday temporarily restored the BRT corridor in South Delhi exclusively for plying of buses.
In an interim order, a Division Bench of the Court comprising Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Manmohan Singh said restoration of the corridor would continue till disposal of a petition by a non-government organisation seeking opening up the corridor to traffic other than buses and the Delhi Government plea to retain the corridor in the interest of common good. “Under the circumstances we direct that till the writ petition is decided, the traffic flow would revert to its movement or flow as per BRT Corridor Traffic Flow System, meaning thereby, the traffic which was flowing before its flow was altered under interim orders passed.”
The Bench said the new arrangement of traffic movement in the corridor will kick in on September 15. The Bench also took on record an assurance from Delhi Government counsel K.T.S. Tulsi that necessary signage(s) would be put in place and traffic marshals would be brought in. Traffic police be stationed for the first few days to avert chaos in the corridor.
The Court also asked the Government to give wide publicity to the revised traffic movement.
Posting the matter to September 21 for further hearing, the Bench asked counsel for the parties to file a brief synopsis of their arguments at least two days before the next date of hearing.
Another Bench of the High Court had earlier this year allowed mixed flow of traffic in the corridor till disposal of the petition for opening it up to other motor vehicles. This had followed the submission of a report compiled after conducting an experiment to allow multi-modal traffic movement in the corridor by the Central Road Research Institute, saying that allowing other vehicles to ply in the dedicated corridor during the experiment “yielded better benefits for the road users compared to the BRT situation”.
