CWG: Delhi will be ready by Aug 31, says Sheila Dikshit

Zeenews Bureau New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday expressed confidence that the Commonwealth Games related work in the city would be totally complete by August 31. Her assurance came in after the government failed to meet the deadline to remove all debris from national capital’s roads.

Today, August 10, was set as the deadline for the removal of all debris from the roads of the capital and the claim has fallen flat on its face as the city is still covered with big patches of debris.

Earlier in the day, when asked by reporters whether removal of the waste and rubble will be completed by today, Sheila said, “Debris has been removed to a very large extent. There is debris here and there..When you build a road or a house or a building, debris is bound to be there.”

The Chief Minister said all construction waste will be cleared from the project sites soon.

Explaining the delay in removal of debris, she said there are "agencies which are not under the Delhi Government and which are undertaking various construction activities."

Blaming the media for not portraying a real picture of the preparations, she said all the key projects, undertaken by the city government, will be completed on time. "Please give a real picture (of the preparations)," she said.

Chief Secretary Rakesh Mehta, had yesterday said that the removal of debris will not be completed in areas where street-scaping works were going on.

"We have already removed 80,000 metric tons of debris. More or less removal of construction waste will be completed by the deadline," he said.

Mehta said removal of debris will not be completed in NDMC areas as DMRC has been allowed to carry out digging till August 15 for their works.

"If there is digging, then how can we complete the removal of debris," he questioned.

Also, according to sources, at least seven key projects for the Commonwealth Games which the Delhi government is handling are set to miss two of the three completion deadlines.

The projects include two parking lots - one for 574 buses that will ferry participants to various stadiums and training venues - a flyover on the UP Link Road and several road-scraping works, according to the report. After a cabinet meeting on July 10, Dikshit had read out the guidelines - July 31 for finishing digging works, August 10 for removing debris from roadsides and August 31 for completing all works.

Only two-thirds of the work on the Shivaji stadium, the training venue for hockey, is complete so far, according to the assessment, and the remaining work cannot be completed by the August 31 deadline, a senior official said. "We have been putting pressure on the construction agency, the New Delhi Municipal Council, but still nearly 30 per cent work remains. It will stretch till late September," an official said.