Pandara Road: How a clerical error pushed Pandavas off New Delhi map

• Friday | 19th April, 2019

The other roads radiating from the complex have names which are far more easily identified — Akbar Road, Ashoka Road, Shahjahan Road and Sher Shah Road, for instance. A clerical error denied the Pandavas a central place in the new capital of New Delhi when the name of the road to be named in their honour was erroneously typed, becoming the city’s well-known Pandara Road. She writes that the name appears in the oldest official maps of the new capital, such as the Delhi Guide Map of 1933 which shows road names. AdvertisingThat the Pandavas would have a road named after them falls in line with the pattern of the makers of the new capital invoking the lineage of dynasties and rulers who had governed Delhi in the past. The unfamiliar name also irked Delhi’s Chief Commissioner in 1942, A V Askwith, writes historian Dr Swapna Liddle in her book Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi.