A day after the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) called off its month-long protest, Jantar Mantar wore a completely different look on Sunday. Makeshift tents that had lined the stretch for over a month were gone, banners had disappeared and the roads that had witnessed weeks of sloganeering and heavy security deployment had been washed clean.
The transformation came after the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) carried out an overnight cleanliness and restoration drive, with vice-chairperson Kuljeet Singh Chahal remaining at the site through the night to supervise the operation.
When The Tribune visited Jantar Mantar on Sunday, sanitation workers were giving finishing touches to the area. Roads and footpaths had been cleaned, public walls repainted after slogans were removed and the green belts restored. Traffic, which had remained disrupted for days during the protest, had largely returned to normal. The Metro network also returned to normal, with commuters moving in and out of stations without disruption.
According to the NDMC, over 500 officers and employees from the Health and Sanitation, Civil Engineering and Horticulture Departments were deployed immediately after the protesters vacated the site on Saturday. The civic body said nearly 60 metric tonnes of waste were removed during the operation.
The Health Department deployed sanitation workers through the night, supported by auto-tippers, heavy trucks, a JCB and high-pressure jetting machines to clear the protest site. Civil Engineering teams washed roads and footpaths, repaired damaged kerbstones and repainted walls defaced with slogans, while the Horticulture Department restored green belts and landscaped areas around Jantar Mantar.
Speaking during the inspection, Chahal said the restoration work began immediately after the protest ended to minimise public inconvenience and restore normal traffic movement at the earliest.
“Our teams worked throughout the night to restore the area. The objective was to ensure that roads, public spaces and civic infrastructure were brought back to normal as quickly as possible,” he said.
He said the entire protest site had been cleaned before any subsequent symbolic clean-up activity took place.
For over a month, Jantar Mantar had remained the epicentre of nationwide protests over the alleged NEET-UG paper leak. The agitation drew thousands of students and activists, while the “Chalo Sansad” march on July 20 led to heavy police deployment, road closures and the shutdown of nearly 18 Delhi Metro stations in central Delhi.
Early on Sunday morning, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation also announced that all stations across the Delhi Metro network had been reopened for passenger services, with both entry and exit restored.