Business may take flight from Gurgaon owing to the regular traffic muddle at the toll plazas on the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway, despite the fact that Gurgaon is home to nearly 250 Fortune500 companies.

The toll plazas — Sirhaul and Kherki Daula — have become impediments to the expansion of commercial and industrial activities in Gurgaon as inordinate congestion have bred a negative sentiment among the business community.

“Because of the toll plazas we decided to shift ten of our plants to Bahadurgarh. Three months ago we had chosen Gurgaon to set up our new corporate office, but the management refused citing the traffic jams at the toll plazas, especially Sirhaul. They did not want executives to get stuck in jams for hours at end. So we shifted the office to Rohini,” said BS Dagar, general manager (HR), Relaxo Footwears Ltd.

Dagar informed that discussions with corporate honchos in his capacity as the chairman of the National HRD Forum revealed that the corporate world was fast losing its fascination with Gurgaon as the favoured destination for setting up industrial units or office spaces.

“Business heads from several companies have told me that they are not going to set up their units in Gurgaon because no one has time to withstand the long queues and traffic snags at the Sirhaul or the Kherki Daula toll plazas,” said Dagar.

Pankaj Tyagi, deputy general manager (operations) at MM Auto and a resident of Gurgaon, said, “My company has units in Manesar and Udyog Vihar and it is a painstaking job for us as well as the workers to commute across the plazas. I hardly have any time left for my kids and family as traffic bottlenecks at the toll plazas take up all my time. It leads to domestic issues, too.”

Similarly, there are not many takers for office spaces in the towering buildings of Manesar IT Park. The developers say almost 90% office space at the park is unoccupied, thanks to the traffic bottlenecks at Kherki Daula toll and Hero Honda Chowk.

Launched in 2006 under the campus development scheme at Sector 8 of Industrial Model Township (IMT), the park was promoted by Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) which allotted big-size plots (10 acres each) to private developers based on the Chinese walk-to-work model.

Real estate development major Shapoorji Pallonji has raised an info-city at the IT Park.

The firm, however, believes that the commutation woes along the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway put the prospective clients off.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/