Displaced, Dusted Over and Waiting: Delhi Metro Phase 4 Residents Speak Out

Three years of construction noise, cracked plastering and rerouted foot traffic, and the shopkeepers of Janakpuri West's Mahavir Enclave market still do not know when the Phase 4 corridor will bring the promised footfall. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation confirmed in June that the Janakpuri West to R.K. Ashram Marg stretch — a 28.9-kilometre corridor costing roughly Rs 8,390 crore — remains on track for partial operations before the end of 2026. For the residents who have watched that construction reshape their streets since late 2023, the news lands with mixed feeling.

Why it matters now is straightforward: the Delhi Metro's Phase 4 expansion is the single largest active infrastructure project inside city limits, and it is approaching the stage where demolitions, underground blasting and surface disruption are at their most intense. Three corridors are being built simultaneously. The Aerocity to Tughlakabad line alone requires land acquisition touching dozens of residential clusters. The Kejriwal government has repeatedly described Phase 4 as essential to cutting private vehicle use and reducing the capital's catastrophic winter air quality — PM2.5 levels in South Delhi routinely crossed 300 micrograms per cubic metre last November. The political timeline matters too: Delhi goes to municipal elections again by late 2027, and metro access is a vote-shaping issue in outer and southern constituencies.

Dust, Detours and Dipping Business

Along Press Enclave Road in Saket, a stretch of roughly 400 metres has been barricaded since February 2025. Auto-rickshaw drivers working the Malviya Nagar corridor say their daily earnings have dropped because the normal pick-up points near Saket District Centre are blocked by DMRC staging equipment. Small traders near the Lajpat Nagar interchange site — where Phase 4 will connect with the existing Pink Line — describe a 30 to 40 percent fall in walk-in customers since the elevated viaduct piers began going up last monsoon season. One textile stall owner in the Central Market area, who has run his business there for over two decades, described watching his monthly turnover shrink without any compensation offer from civic authorities.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has a grievance redressal mechanism under its Project-Affected Persons policy, but residents in Vikaspuri say the process requires documentation that informal tenants and unlicensed vendors simply cannot produce. The National Capital Territory of Delhi Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act and parallel DMRC social impact guidelines require resettlement surveys before displacement, but community-level awareness of these entitlements is patchy at best. A community organiser working with the Dwarka Residents Welfare Association told The Daily Delhi that most families in the affected zones along Sector 10 and Sector 21 in Dwarka had not been formally approached about compensation timelines even after structural surveys were completed on their blocks.

The Calculation Residents Are Making

Not everyone is hostile to the project. In Tughlakabad Extension, where the southern corridor will eventually terminate, residents who currently spend 90 minutes on buses to reach Connaught Place describe Phase 4 as potentially life-changing. The existing Blue and Yellow Lines each carry over 700,000 passengers daily across their networks — a figure the DMRC's own 2024 annual report cited as evidence of suppressed demand on routes not yet served by rail. The argument those residents make is simple: short-term disruption for a permanent travel-time saving of 45 minutes each way is worth it. What frustrates them is the opacity, not the construction itself.

DMRC has set up a citizen helpline — 155370 — and designated Public Interface Officers at each Phase 4 corridor site. Residents in affected colonies are being urged by both AAP ward councillors and local BJP Members of the Legislative Assembly to register structural damage complaints before the next monsoon assessment window closes on July 31. The DMRC has committed to publishing monthly construction progress reports on its website, though community groups in Janakpuri say those reports address engineering milestones, not livelihood impacts. For the traders of Mahavir Enclave, the metro may eventually bring more customers to their door. Right now it is keeping existing ones away.