IFFCO Chowk Repair Waits; DLF Water Supply Hit Again

GURUGRAM: Repair on the IFFCO Chowk service road that caved in on Tuesday has not started. GMDA crews are still diverting sewage and pumping out the hole, and the crater that opened at about 10 feet across has widened to more than 30 feet.

The affected stretch remains barricaded. Sewage from the broken length of a 1,000-mm GMDA master sewer — an old line that carries waste towards the Behrampur treatment plant and has not had cured-in-place pipe rehabilitation — is being turned to an alternate manhole to cut the flow and slow further erosion. Until that diversion holds and the line is inspected in the dry, engineers will not rebuild the crust.

The delay has a second cost. On Wednesday morning, water supply in parts of the city was hit. DLF's facilities team told residents in Phases 1 to 4 that, as per GMDA, the master water-supply line at IFFCO Chowk had been damaged and that DLF City supply "may be affected." Residents were asked to use water carefully while GMDA worked on restoration. The same corridor had already seen weekend disruption after excavation near Baani Square damaged a GMDA water main feeding Sectors 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 56, 57 and 58 to 76.

Traffic is being pushed around the hole. After the 3.15 pm cave-in on Tuesday, a Gurugram Traffic Police team led by Inspector Mahabir Singh cordoned the stretch with reflective barricades. NHAI closed two service lanes. Commuters coming from MG Road and IFFCO Chowk towards Delhi or Sukhrali have lost the U-turn flyover movement; Delhi-bound vehicles are being told to U-turn from Sukhrali. A parallel service lane is in use for some Manesar-bound traffic. NHAI said at night that four tractor-mounted pumps were draining the sinkhole.

NHAI's Delhi regional office had noted that preliminary inspection pointed to leakage from the GMDA sewer beneath the location, soil erosion and road settlement. GMDA Executive Engineer Bhim Arya had said sewage-line repair would start Wednesday morning. By Thursday, that start had not come; dewatering and diversion were still the day's work. Officials said the exact cause would be known only after the sewer is seen in the dry, and that road restoration would follow the pipe repair, not the other way round.

IFFCO Chowk has a memory for this. Similar cave-ins were reported in 2019 and 2020. In 2021 a retaining wall of the flyover came down after a sewer under the structure was damaged in rain. The line that should have been shifted before the 2019 flyover was built was moved only in 2022, after that collapse. The current master sewer under the service road is a different, unrehabilitated length of the same old network.

For commuters, the instruction is practical: do not use the damaged service road, expect a Sukhrali U-turn if heading to Delhi, and do not assume DLF overhead tanks will refill on the usual cycle until GMDA says the water main is sound. For GMDA, the order of work is fixed — stop the sewage, see the pipe, then fill the 30-foot hole.