Crumbling roads to overflowing drains: What ails Indirapuram's underbelly
Monsoon
's arrival has turned the yearlong mess on both sides of Kala Patthar Road, the central artery of Indirapuram that connects the trans-Hindon township with NH-9 and Delhi-Meerut Expressway, into an unmanageable reality for the thousands who use it every day.
And seemingly for the police and corporation, too, with neither able to come up with a solution that streamlines traffic and put an end to the civic mess that people of Makanpur village on one side and families living in housing societies in Ahimsa Khand-1 and Vaibhav Khand on the other have had to put up with month after month, year after year.
In the last three years, two big administrative reforms have taken place, the formation of the police commissionerate and the handover of Indirapuram, which used to be under GDA, to the corporation.
But the change appears to have bypassed residents of Indirapuram, which has seen little reprieve from traffic unruliness and civic lapses.
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On both sides, Kala Patthar Road has enough width to accommodate utilities like a footpath and regulated parking areas for vehicles. But the roadsides are broken, uneven and encroached either by vehicles or by food carts.
As a result, the pedestrians and vehicles are locked in a daylong jostle for space past a maze of haphazardly parked cars, people crowding around stalls, autos and e-rickshaws picking up and dropping off passengers and two-wheelers darting to and from every direction, never mind the direction of the traffic.
"It's like there are no rules here. There are two traffic signals at the Gaur mall and Aditya mall crossings, but no one bothers to even look at them. Vehicles are merrily driving on the wrong side all the way to NH-9 and even on it. They are coming from all directions. It's a driving nightmare. Have I ever seen police doing something about it? No. Have I ever seen the roadsides getting cleared? No," says Smita, resident of a housing society in the area who travels to Delhi for work every day.
Kala Patthar road is also the main shopping centre for trans-Hindon. Shops selling everything from sofa covers to light bulbs and shoes line the Makanpur side of the road along its length from the NH-9 service lane to Mangal Bazar Chowk. On the opposite side, furniture shops and food vendors have made the roadside their own. Around the L-shaped Aditya mall, congestion is at its worst because of mall visitors parking on the roadside rather than in the designated basement area.
Food vendors form the second layer of encroachers, spilling onto the road. The result is a daylong gridlock. So, on this road that is always teeming with people, the shoulders and half the road space get flooded every time it rains. The only option to walk this leaves people with is through traffic, risking accidents.
Then there are thousands of locals who waste time navigating jams every day despite being right next to an expressway.
"It takes me as long to drive past Makanpur and Khoda to get to the main Delhi-Meerut Expressway as it does to get from there to Sarai Kale Khan," a Vaibhav Khand resident who works with a Gurgaon-based company said. The mess on Kala Patthar road, he added, makes him regret the decision of buying a house in the area, "which is otherwise very nice to live in".
Asked about the traffic situation on Kala Patthar Road and what steps police have taken, ACP traffic Ziauddin Ahmad said neither of the two signals on Kala Patthar Road has been working for the last couple of days.
"We have informed the corporation. It will be repaired soon. We will deploy a traffic team at the place to stop wrong-side driving," he said.
Inside Makanpur village, from which Indirapuram township was carved out in the 90s, the mess gets much worse, a stark contrast to the manicured compounds of the highrises that have come up around it. A pond inside the village reeks of filth. Littered with trash and barricaded by an uprooted fence, children gather by it to go cycling or fly kites.
The narrow lanes leading up to it are littered with sludge dug out from choked drains.
The sludge is everywhere, on village lanes and along the main road.
Madan Pal Tyagi, a local resident, told TOI, "The lanes will be inundated with at least three feet of wastewater, and to reach here, you will have to wade through filth. This is an annual feature, just wait for a few days when it starts raining heavily. One may choose to overlook it as a problem limited to Makanpur, but residents living in multi-crore highrise apartments in Indirapuram, just 100 metres from here, also feel the pinch of civic apathy.
The wastewater flows down to Kala Patthar Road, triggering traffic jams."
According to a GDA official, Indirapuram has a massive drainage system, approximately 135km long. However, the circumference of the pipeline is narrow and it cannot handle the volume of wastewater generated in the area, leading to flooding on the roads. "Topography is also a factor behind this because the gradient of the township is towards the east, towards Hindon river, and due to the uneven nature of land here, water does not flow out smoothly.
Funds alone will not solve the issue as it requires technical expertise and good leadership," the official said.
Previously, the township used to be under a single ward, Makanpur. After delimitation, it was divided into seven wards in 2016. Over the years, Makanpur, which has a population of 40,000, came to constitute ward number 57 of GMC. Radhey Shyam Tyagi, councillor of ward 57, says, "Very soon, we will work to improve the situation, but it would be unfair to say that the situation in Makanpur has not improved.
Today, every lane of the village has interlocking tiles.
"
"For GDA," adds Tyagi, "Makanpur was at the bottom of its priority list as it focused more on Indirapuram township. So, there was virtually no civic agency to take care of Makanpur. After it became part of one of GMC's wards, things did improve, but marginally. Now that the handover of Makanpur, along with Indirapuram, has taken place, and GMC has received considerable funds from GDA as part of the handover deal, I can assure you the situation is going to change drastically.
"
Mayor Sunita Dayal told TOI Makanpur's development is "interlinked with Indirapuram's". "Apart from the sewer and drain problem, encroachment is a big issue. We are in the process of creating a designated vending zone, which will take care of the problem of encroachment. Since the civic issue is a major legacy problem, we will have to draw up a plan to improve the situation, which we will take up in due course."
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The Hindu
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Time of India
08-07-2025
- Time of India
Crumbling roads to overflowing drains: What ails Ghaziabad's Makanpur and Kala Patthar road
1 2 3 4 5 Ghaziabad: Monsoon 's arrival has turned the yearlong mess on both sides of Kala Patthar Road, the central artery of Indirapuram that connects the trans-Hindon township with NH-9 and Delhi-Meerut Expressway, into an unmanageable reality for the thousands who use it every day. And seemingly for the police and corporation, too, with neither able to come up with a solution that streamlines traffic and put an end to the civic mess that people of Makanpur village on one side and families living in housing societies in Ahimsa Khand-1 and Vaibhav Khand on the other have had to put up with month after month, year after year. In the last three years, two big administrative reforms have taken place, the formation of the police commissionerate and the handover of Indirapuram, which used to be under GDA, to the corporation. But the change appears to have bypassed residents of Indirapuram, which has seen little reprieve from traffic unruliness and civic lapses. You Can Also Check: Noida AQI | Weather in Noida | Bank Holidays in Noida | Public Holidays in Noida On both sides, Kala Patthar Road has enough width to accommodate utilities like a footpath and regulated parking areas for vehicles. But the roadsides are broken, uneven and encroached either by vehicles or by food carts. As a result, the pedestrians and vehicles are locked in a daylong jostle for space past a maze of haphazardly parked cars, people crowding around stalls, autos and e-rickshaws picking up and dropping off passengers and two-wheelers darting to and from every direction, never mind the direction of the traffic. "It's like there are no rules here. There are two traffic signals at the Gaur mall and Aditya mall crossings, but no one bothers to even look at them. Vehicles are merrily driving on the wrong side all the way to NH-9 and even on it. They are coming from all directions. It's a driving nightmare. Have I ever seen police doing something about it? No. Have I ever seen the roadsides getting cleared? No," says Smita, resident of a housing society in the area who travels to Delhi for work every day. Kala Patthar road is also the main shopping centre for trans-Hindon. Shops selling everything from sofa covers to light bulbs and shoes line the Makanpur side of the road along its length from the NH-9 service lane to Mangal Bazar Chowk. On the opposite side, furniture shops and food vendors have made the roadside their own. Around the L-shaped Aditya mall, congestion is at its worst because of mall visitors parking on the roadside rather than in the designated basement area. Food vendors form the second layer of encroachers, spilling onto the road. The result is a daylong gridlock. So, on this road that is always teeming with people, the shoulders and half the road space get flooded every time it rains. The only option to walk this leaves people with is through traffic, risking accidents. Then there are thousands of locals who waste time navigating jams every day despite being right next to an expressway. "It takes me as long to drive past Makanpur and Khoda to get to the main Delhi-Meerut Expressway as it does to get from there to Sarai Kale Khan," a Vaibhav Khand resident who works with a Gurgaon-based company said. The mess on Kala Patthar road, he added, makes him regret the decision of buying a house in the area, "which is otherwise very nice to live in". Asked about the traffic situation on Kala Patthar Road and what steps police have taken, ACP traffic Ziauddin Ahmad said neither of the two signals on Kala Patthar Road has been working for the last couple of days. "We have informed the corporation. It will be repaired soon. We will deploy a traffic team at the place to stop wrong-side driving," he said. Inside Makanpur village, from which Indirapuram township was carved out in the 90s, the mess gets much worse, a stark contrast to the manicured compounds of the highrises that have come up around it. A pond inside the village reeks of filth. Littered with trash and barricaded by an uprooted fence, children gather by it to go cycling or fly kites. The narrow lanes leading up to it are littered with sludge dug out from choked drains. The sludge is everywhere, on village lanes and along the main road. Madan Pal Tyagi, a local resident, told TOI, "The lanes will be inundated with at least three feet of wastewater, and to reach here, you will have to wade through filth. This is an annual feature, just wait for a few days when it starts raining heavily. One may choose to overlook it as a problem limited to Makanpur, but residents living in multi-crore highrise apartments in Indirapuram, just 100 metres from here, also feel the pinch of civic apathy. The wastewater flows down to Kala Patthar Road, triggering traffic jams." According to a GDA official, Indirapuram has a massive drainage system, approximately 135km long. However, the circumference of the pipeline is narrow and it cannot handle the volume of wastewater generated in the area, leading to flooding on the roads. "Topography is also a factor behind this because the gradient of the township is towards the east, towards Hindon river, and due to the uneven nature of land here, water does not flow out smoothly. Funds alone will not solve the issue as it requires technical expertise and good leadership," the official said. Previously, the township used to be under a single ward, Makanpur. After delimitation, it was divided into seven wards in 2016. Over the years, Makanpur, which has a population of 40,000, came to constitute ward number 57 of GMC. Radhey Shyam Tyagi, councillor of ward 57, says, "Very soon, we will work to improve the situation, but it would be unfair to say that the situation in Makanpur has not improved. Today, every lane of the village has interlocking tiles. " "For GDA," adds Tyagi, "Makanpur was at the bottom of its priority list as it focused more on Indirapuram township. So, there was virtually no civic agency to take care of Makanpur. After it became part of one of GMC's wards, things did improve, but marginally. Now that the handover of Makanpur, along with Indirapuram, has taken place, and GMC has received considerable funds from GDA as part of the handover deal, I can assure you the situation is going to change drastically. " Mayor Sunita Dayal told TOI Makanpur's development is "interlinked with Indirapuram's". "Apart from the sewer and drain problem, encroachment is a big issue. We are in the process of creating a designated vending zone, which will take care of the problem of encroachment. Since the civic issue is a major legacy problem, we will have to draw up a plan to improve the situation, which we will take up in due course."
Time of India
08-07-2025
- Time of India
Crumbling roads to overflowing drains: What ails Indirapuram's underbelly
Ghaziabad: Monsoon 's arrival has turned the yearlong mess on both sides of Kala Patthar Road, the central artery of Indirapuram that connects the trans-Hindon township with NH-9 and Delhi-Meerut Expressway, into an unmanageable reality for the thousands who use it every day. And seemingly for the police and corporation, too, with neither able to come up with a solution that streamlines traffic and put an end to the civic mess that people of Makanpur village on one side and families living in housing societies in Ahimsa Khand-1 and Vaibhav Khand on the other have had to put up with month after month, year after year. In the last three years, two big administrative reforms have taken place, the formation of the police commissionerate and the handover of Indirapuram, which used to be under GDA, to the corporation. But the change appears to have bypassed residents of Indirapuram, which has seen little reprieve from traffic unruliness and civic lapses. You Can Also Check: Noida AQI | Weather in Noida | Bank Holidays in Noida | Public Holidays in Noida On both sides, Kala Patthar Road has enough width to accommodate utilities like a footpath and regulated parking areas for vehicles. But the roadsides are broken, uneven and encroached either by vehicles or by food carts. As a result, the pedestrians and vehicles are locked in a daylong jostle for space past a maze of haphazardly parked cars, people crowding around stalls, autos and e-rickshaws picking up and dropping off passengers and two-wheelers darting to and from every direction, never mind the direction of the traffic. "It's like there are no rules here. There are two traffic signals at the Gaur mall and Aditya mall crossings, but no one bothers to even look at them. Vehicles are merrily driving on the wrong side all the way to NH-9 and even on it. They are coming from all directions. It's a driving nightmare. Have I ever seen police doing something about it? No. Have I ever seen the roadsides getting cleared? No," says Smita, resident of a housing society in the area who travels to Delhi for work every day. Kala Patthar road is also the main shopping centre for trans-Hindon. Shops selling everything from sofa covers to light bulbs and shoes line the Makanpur side of the road along its length from the NH-9 service lane to Mangal Bazar Chowk. On the opposite side, furniture shops and food vendors have made the roadside their own. Around the L-shaped Aditya mall, congestion is at its worst because of mall visitors parking on the roadside rather than in the designated basement area. Food vendors form the second layer of encroachers, spilling onto the road. The result is a daylong gridlock. So, on this road that is always teeming with people, the shoulders and half the road space get flooded every time it rains. The only option to walk this leaves people with is through traffic, risking accidents. Then there are thousands of locals who waste time navigating jams every day despite being right next to an expressway. "It takes me as long to drive past Makanpur and Khoda to get to the main Delhi-Meerut Expressway as it does to get from there to Sarai Kale Khan," a Vaibhav Khand resident who works with a Gurgaon-based company said. The mess on Kala Patthar road, he added, makes him regret the decision of buying a house in the area, "which is otherwise very nice to live in". Asked about the traffic situation on Kala Patthar Road and what steps police have taken, ACP traffic Ziauddin Ahmad said neither of the two signals on Kala Patthar Road has been working for the last couple of days. "We have informed the corporation. It will be repaired soon. We will deploy a traffic team at the place to stop wrong-side driving," he said. Inside Makanpur village, from which Indirapuram township was carved out in the 90s, the mess gets much worse, a stark contrast to the manicured compounds of the highrises that have come up around it. A pond inside the village reeks of filth. Littered with trash and barricaded by an uprooted fence, children gather by it to go cycling or fly kites. The narrow lanes leading up to it are littered with sludge dug out from choked drains. The sludge is everywhere, on village lanes and along the main road. Madan Pal Tyagi, a local resident, told TOI, "The lanes will be inundated with at least three feet of wastewater, and to reach here, you will have to wade through filth. This is an annual feature, just wait for a few days when it starts raining heavily. One may choose to overlook it as a problem limited to Makanpur, but residents living in multi-crore highrise apartments in Indirapuram, just 100 metres from here, also feel the pinch of civic apathy. The wastewater flows down to Kala Patthar Road, triggering traffic jams." According to a GDA official, Indirapuram has a massive drainage system, approximately 135km long. However, the circumference of the pipeline is narrow and it cannot handle the volume of wastewater generated in the area, leading to flooding on the roads. "Topography is also a factor behind this because the gradient of the township is towards the east, towards Hindon river, and due to the uneven nature of land here, water does not flow out smoothly. Funds alone will not solve the issue as it requires technical expertise and good leadership," the official said. Previously, the township used to be under a single ward, Makanpur. After delimitation, it was divided into seven wards in 2016. Over the years, Makanpur, which has a population of 40,000, came to constitute ward number 57 of GMC. Radhey Shyam Tyagi, councillor of ward 57, says, "Very soon, we will work to improve the situation, but it would be unfair to say that the situation in Makanpur has not improved. Today, every lane of the village has interlocking tiles. " "For GDA," adds Tyagi, "Makanpur was at the bottom of its priority list as it focused more on Indirapuram township. So, there was virtually no civic agency to take care of Makanpur. After it became part of one of GMC's wards, things did improve, but marginally. Now that the handover of Makanpur, along with Indirapuram, has taken place, and GMC has received considerable funds from GDA as part of the handover deal, I can assure you the situation is going to change drastically. " Mayor Sunita Dayal told TOI Makanpur's development is "interlinked with Indirapuram's". "Apart from the sewer and drain problem, encroachment is a big issue. We are in the process of creating a designated vending zone, which will take care of the problem of encroachment. Since the civic issue is a major legacy problem, we will have to draw up a plan to improve the situation, which we will take up in due course."
