HC seeks govt's reply on BRT

 The Delhi High Court on Monday sought a response from the city government on a plea seeking review of the order passed by it, dismissing an earlier plea that sought the scrapping of the bus rapid transit corridor here.

Filing the review petition, NGO Nyaya Bhoomi sought scrapping of the 5.8-km BRT stretch between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand.

The petition claimed that the stretch was chosen against the norms of the Master Plan Delhi 2021.

“The city government counsel has to seek instruction from the transport department in respect of the width of the road from Ambedkar Nagar to Moolchand by November 21,” said a division Bench of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Manmohan Singh.

On October 18, the HC had dismissed the NGO’s plea seeking permission for cars to use a road lane reserved for buses on the BRT corridor.

The Bench had said that the implementation of BRT corridors in the city was not an “irrational decision”.

Nyaya Bhoomi president B B Sharan had alleged that the corridor was causing inconvenience to the public. The review plea said the judgment had ignored the norms in the Master Plan Delhi 2021 that specifically lays down that BRT cannot be allowed on a road that was less than 45 metre wide.

“The Master Plan Delhi 2021 is a statutory plan and has the force of law. Under the plan, the BRT cannot exist on a road less than 45 metres in width,” the NGO said in the petition. “But this court has inadvertently computed 45 metres as equal to 100 feet, whereas 45 metres come to about 150 feet.”

The NGO further said, “The Master Plan mandates maximum use and utilisation of a road, but the BRT project, 45 per cent of the road space is underutilised.”

The court on May 12 had allowed other vehicles on the BRT as part of a feasibility study undertaken by the Central Road Research Institute, which in its report had said commuters will benefit if BRT is scraped.