News: Rajiv Chowk Inspection Shows Gurugram Agencies Passing Blame-11-05-2026
Reporting in Gurugram, I have often watched civic agencies spar over how the city is run, with joint action usually coming only when someone higher up steps in. Last week at Rajiv Chowk I came upon officials of the National Highways Authority of India inspecting the junction that links new Gurugram’s sectors with the administrative blocks.
The mood was tense. Officials conceded that the Haryana chief minister had been unhappy with the upkeep of the intersection during his April visit, and a cave-in on the Sohna elevated corridor a day earlier had added to the scrutiny. Senior officials from Delhi seemed displeased with neglected plantation, encroached traffic islands, scattered construction waste, faded markings, non-working lifts at foot overbridges and broken signage.
Officials of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram and the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority arrived soon after, and what followed looked like a staged exercise in shifting blame.
Talks on redesign and widening are still going on. A recent traffic engineering centre survey found that nearly 70% of vehicles use the junction as an exit towards Sohna. Officials said narrow channelisation and poor signage cause jams and have made wrong-side driving routine.
One official spoke of work on a "war-footing", though others privately preferred planned, long-term upgrades. Almost at once, sweeping machines and sprinklers began circling the chowk, and debris that had apparently lain for weeks was carted off.
What stayed with me was the officials’ conduct. Many kept a wary distance from the MCG commissioner, a 2013-batch IAS officer. I wondered why respect for seniors so seldom shows up as timely work.
