IFFCO Chowk Sewer Repair Starts, Diversion for 5 Days

GURUGRAM: Repair on the 1,000-mm master sewer under the IFFCO Chowk service road has started, Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority engineers said on Thursday, after sewage was turned to an alternate manhole and the crater was pumped dry.

The work will take at least five days. That clock can stretch if more of the old pipe is found damaged once the lining machine is inside. The hole opened on Tuesday at about 10 feet and widened to more than 30 feet within hours. Until Thursday morning, crews were still only dewatering. The shift now is from pumps to a trenchless lining of about 100 metres.

GMDA is using machine-wound spiral lining, or MWSL. A winding machine works from manholes and lays a PVC profile strip inside the existing sewer. The strip interlocks into a new pipe within the old one. Officials said the method is close in purpose to cured-in-place pipe lining, which the authority has already used elsewhere in the city, and that either can add around 50 years to an ageing line. MWSL was chosen here because of the site and the repair needed. The first 100-metre stretch is estimated at about Rs 70 lakh. If inspection shows damage beyond that length, those portions will be taken up too.

The line carries sewage from DLF Phase 2, MG Road and IFFCO Chowk towards the Behrampur treatment plant. It had not had CIPP rehabilitation before this week's cave-in. National Highways Authority of India teams will not restore the service road until the pipe is sound. "We are continuously coordinating with GMDA and once the sewer pipeline is rectified, we will start with the service road restoration," an NHAI official said.

Traffic remains diverted. The barricaded stretch still cuts movement towards the U-turn flyover. Commuters coming from MG Road and IFFCO Chowk towards Delhi or Sukhrali are being sent around; Delhi-bound vehicles must U-turn from Sukhrali. IFFCO Chowk's flyover, finished in 2019, was built to ease the Delhi-Gurugram Expressway. The service road under it has now failed twice in three weeks at nearby spots: a cave-in near the underpass on 7 August after rain, and this 1,000-mm sewer on Tuesday.

The same corridor has a longer memory. 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. A line that was supposed to be shifted before the flyover went up was moved only in 2022. Officials say the current master sewer is a different, unrehabilitated length of that old network.

For the next five days, at least, the instruction for motorists is unchanged: stay off the closed service road, expect the Sukhrali U-turn, and do not treat the five-day estimate as a promise. GMDA has said the objective is not only to close this hole but to line other old stretches where the method fits, so the next wet week does not open another 30-foot gap on a highway service lane.