This bridge has always been ‘talk of the town’ due to its beautiful structure. But, for Delhiites there is a different significance of this bridge.
Actually, this bridge was built-in replacement of one of North Eastern Delhi’s bridge which is in bad condition. It’s a commonplace to face traffic jams on this old bridge. People call it as ‘Wazirabad Bridge’. Due to this, people are forced to travel through Kashmiri gate bridge which is a longer route.
While this bridge was being build, many other bridges have already been built and inaugurated on Yamuna river in Delhi. It was a target to build this bridge before 2010 commonwealth games. Yet, it took almost 14 years for this bridge to become usable by Delhi people. Even the amount spent in building this bridge has doubled than that decided earlier.
The plan to build Signature bridge was decided back in 2004. At that time the building cost was estimated to be Rs 464 crores. Now, this cost has increased to more than Rs. 1518 crores. This money was of common people and not of different governments which ruled in Centre and Delhi during these 14 years.
BJP government was in Central government in 2004 when this project was decided. After that, Congress ruled for next 10 years in Delhi. The proposal to build this bridge was cleared in 2007 under Congress government. This is when the building project of Signature bridge was started. It was aimed to complete this project till 2010 but this didn’t happen. After that a new government of AAP-Congress alliance came into power which lasted for only 49 days.
President’s rule succeeded after fall of this government in Delhi. Kejriwal’s AAP government again won elections and came into power in 2015. During his tenure the work took pace. However, there was discontent among people due to extension in deadline.
Now, this bridge has been inaugurated after series of setbacks in the project. All three parties are claiming their contribution in building of this bridge. They want to take credit for this ‘beautiful’ bridge. But, they cannot escape from delay in its building as well as unnecessary expenditure done in its building.
