It is a daily struggle of every Delhiite who goes to work and returns after battling his way through the choked Delhi roads. In the rush hour the main roads are completely jammed.
The auto-rickshaws and e-rickshaws are the main culprits behind the clogging of streets. They park their vehicle at will, move at leisure and stop where they want to, making Delhi’s traffic scary.
Auto-rickshaws and e-rickshaws are everywhere and they act like they own the road. They take up so much space that they turn big, two-lane streets into small, crowded lanes. The space left for others to pass is so minimal that two persons cannot cross each other without rubbing shoulders
“Three wheels are bad for anything on two legs and more than three wheels.” A new, unwritten law that seems to govern Delhi’s roads, turning them into a free-for-all where the city’s arteries are dying one illegal lane at a time.
This is a story about how Delhi’s roads are being held hostage and the very people meant to regulate the traffic are looking the other way.
Nowhere is this more visible than at choke-points like Saket, Kalkaji, Defence Colony, Lajpat Nagar, Dilshad Garden, Seelampur and Jhilmil, but the problem spreads further still.
At Akshardham, just under the shadow of the metro station, fleets of auto-rickshaws line up directly on the main road.
What should be a swift exit toward Noida or ITO turns into a crawling bottleneck, as passengers pour out of the station and drivers jostle each one trying to block the others just enough to grab a ‘sawari’. The noise, the shoving of vehicles, and the sheer disregard for traffic rules create a kind of daily theatre of chaos.
Far across the city, in Mehrauli, the scene looks similar, though older and narrower. Near the historical Qutub area, the cramped roads become a battlefield where autos and e-rickshaws jam themselves into spaces so tight that even pedestrians are forced onto the road. Tourists often have no choice but to accept any auto or e-rickshaw they find, giving drivers more reason to stake claim on footpaths and entry gates. The entire main road meant to carry buses and private cars toward Gurgaon or Saket shrinks into sluggish single-lane patches, where honking has become less of a sound and more of an unending background score.
This correspondent’s chase for this story began from the high vantage point of the footbridge at Akshardham metro station. Below, the spectacle of chaos unfolded in full cinematic glory. Auto-rickshaws, ignoring all rules, had commandeered two-thirds of the road, parked in a haphazard mess. It was a scene of perfect anarchy, executed with effortless precision.
Later, at the Dilshad Garden metro station, Rashida, a 45-year-old e-rickshaw driver who has been on the road for eight years said she bought her rickshaw for Rs 1,45,000. For her, the battle begins the moment a passenger steps out of the metro. “There’s tough competition,” she lamented, “so we break the rows to get to them first.” Rashida is a rare breed, aware of the rules and vocal about her frustrations. “The Government put these rickshaws on the road but didn’t make specific lanes for us,” she complained.
As if on cue, a younger driver in an e-rickshaw dove into an illegal line, cutting off others. He shrugged off the rules with a familiar, cynical wisdom: “To earn money, you do what you have to.” He claimed the traffic police, though they sometimes tow vehicles with a crane, will let you off the hook as long as your papers are in order. Just then, a crane appeared in the distance, and in a flash, the conversation was over. Every e-rickshaw scrambled, a swarm of mechanical ants fleeing a predator.
Next stop was with Triloki, a 46-year-old auto driver. “Come,” he said, “I’ll show you the real problem.” Our ride, from the Anand Vihar bus stand to the Paharganj red light near New Delhi Railway Station, was a rolling tour of traffic chaos.
Another 34-year-old auto driver said, “earlier, there were fewer autos and e-rickshaws and more passengers,” he said with a sigh. “Now it’s the other way around. We’re the ones waiting in queue for them.” He confirmed there are no regulations on the number of three-wheelers in a given area. The conversation took a darker turn with another driver named Jagat. When asked about their audacity to flout rules right outside a police station, he laughed without a hint of humour. “We pay our group leader a hundred rupees every fortnight,” he confessed. “Every auto and e-rickshaw driver pays this fee. It goes to the people in power. So why would we be afraid?”
And there it was: the hidden, ugly truth about our roads. The chaos isn’t an accident. It’s a system that’s kept running on purpose, powered by small-time corruption and a complete lack of concern for everyone else. Delhi’s roads aren’t just crowded. They’re held hostage. And like the everyday commuters stranded in jams from Akshardham to Mehrauli, the city itself pays the toll.