Sangam Vihar- The Sangam of "Gramin Sewa"

There are more than 500 plus Gramin Sewa autos in this area, having specific routes mainly “Virat Cinema – Nehru Place”, “Hamdard Nagar – Govindpuri Metro”, “Maidan Garhi – Devli Gaon”, “Sangam Vihar – Qutub Minar Metro”, “Sangam Vihar – Badarpur Border”, “Saket Metro – Sangam Vihar”, these are the main routes on which the Gramin Sewa autos cross each other.

“Where ever you go, we follow”, it looks like the situation of traffic in Delhi from north to south and east to west traffic is everywhere, either its morning or its evening. The traffic police seem to be helpless with the increasing number of vehicles on the roads.

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Noida-Faridabad-Gurugram, one of the busiest corridors in Delhi- NCR region. One patch on this corridor is Hamdard Nagar to Ambedkar Nagar. This patch can be seen at any time and found to be busy every single time, sometimes due to heavy flow to vehicles and sometimes due to the congestion created by “Gramin Sewa”. These are the sharing auto-rickshaws that help local people to commute in nearby parts of their surroundings. The hub for these GS on this patch is Sangam Vihar, it’s the place where the Gramin Sewa of 6-7 routes meets and creates complete chaos on the roads. The patch between Hamdard Nagar and Ambedkar Nagar seems to be always blocked.

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There are more than 500 plus Gramin Sewa autos in this area, having specific routes mainly “Virat Cinema – Nehru Place”, “Hamdard Nagar – Govindpuri Metro”, “Maidan Garhi – Devli Gaon”, “Sangam Vihar – Qutub Minar Metro”, “Sangam Vihar – Badarpur Border”, “Saket Metro – Sangam Vihar”, these are the main routes on which the Gramin Sewa autos cross each other.

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They may be the savior for the local transport system but the number of traffic rules these Gramin Sewa drivers break is countless. Rush driving, avoiding traffic rules, zig-zag driving, parking at unauthorized parking places, these are the common practices of these drivers. The passage that connects Faridabad, Noida, and Gurugram to Delhi is suffering from heavy congestion. From Hamdard Nagar to Saket Metro, the route is just 5-6 km, but in the morning and evening time, you may take 30-40 minutes at least to cover that distance. The drivers of these autos do not hesitate to stop their autos anywhere on the roads, just to pick and drop the passengers causing traffic jams and sometimes accidents too.

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As soon as the sun rises, the chase between these Gramin Sewa drivers starts to earn more money and to carry more passengers in their autos. They didn’t care about the comfort of the passengers, the only target is to fill the auto and start the trip, they didn’t bother about the passengers whether they are comfortable or not.

On a personal level, I cannot find any valuable step taken by the concerned authorities in this matter might be they are working on this, but till now no results can be seen on the roads except blocking some of the U-turns. Sometimes it looks like these “Gramin Sewa” drivers have their own rules and regulations, which they follow very rigidly.