New Delhi: For the national capital – one that has welcomed state heads, heads of government and other eminent people ever since it was founded – visiting VIPs are very much a part of daily life.It has been the city of games – Asian, Commonwealth – and also summits of many kinds. There are ‘restrictions’ always to observe and some traffic inconveniences to the general public. But the triple-engine government, in just this year, can claim credit for at least two massive disruptions, both government-pushed, that have added more roadblocks to the obstacle race that commuting in the country’s most pampered capital has become.The Delhi government has ordered September 11, Friday, shut for its government offices, public sector undertakings and related institutions. Central government offices located in Delhi and New Delhi will also remain closed on the day. The decision has been taken to help the government manage arrangements for the BRICS Summit. Schools were also ordered shut. Thirty-five roads and 22 diversion points are mentioned in complicated maps issued by the Delhi police.The only exception, curiously enough, is the cricket match between India and Afghanistan at Ferozeshah Kotla grounds on September 13, Sunday evening. The BCCI holds a special place in the government’s calendar. It was run by the Union home minister’s son till recently, before he went on to control the ICC.Well before the BRICS summit starts, thousands of commuters have spoken of inordinate delays and roadblocks they have had to suffer. Time lost, anxiety faced, appointments not kept – and that’s in addition to the cost of fuel they have incurred and the rise in pollution due to thousands of idling cars and two-wheelers on the roads.Delhi Police’s traffic advisory.Leading researcher on urban planning and also senior partner at The Knowledge Company, Ankur Bisen, told The Wire, “Normally capital cities world over have carved out exclusive governance corridors and zones to pull off such events (Paris, London, Beijing). Or capital cities (Washington, Canberra) exist for such government purposes only and not much intersect with the daily lives of citizens, trade and commerce. Delhi-NCR is a wholesale market, migrant / transit transit hub, GCC hub, medical tourism hub, auto-component / tooling hub, outsourcing hub, tourism gateway, and a capital city that has to show it is no less than others when it comes to pageantry without a carved out governance structure / zones. This adversely impacts productivity of businesses, continuity in daily lives and stresses the bandwidth of governance to direct it towards its management.”The extremely restrictive measures put in, as the Delhi police FAQs make clear, could be due to a fear of ‘flash protests’. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are reportedly monitoring various organisations including student outfits with regard to possible mobilisation over issues such as Israel and Gaza, the West Asia crisis and other issues related to human rights.Summits like the G-7 one actually account for protests and plan accordingly, with protestors allowed within a certain area, visible to summiteers and ensured that they have their say, while the summit can go on, unobstructed. But the behaviour of the Modi government, BJP and Delhi police to protests by the Indian Youth Congress at the AI Summit suggested more paranoia than a rational response.This time, post the July 20 protests, the fear of more spontaneous and planned protests seems to be guiding the near-lockdown the capital city has been put under.A former police officer disagrees and says that there are “13 heads of state coming including Russia, China, Iran which can be a nightmare for security agencies. Anywhere these checks will have to be there. New Delhi has to be shut off due to sheer numbers.”The NAM summit, previous BRIC summits, G-20 too, did not call for a holiday in the capital. Now offices and the Supreme Court have been ordered shut on what should have been a productive weekday. Why?Yadhovardhan Azad, a former Indian Police Service officer, formerly Special Director, Intelligence Bureau who served as Secretary (Security), government of India and a former Central Information Commissioner said, “International meets like BRICS shut down the capital causing great discomfort to the common people. Shutting down the metro, offices, roads paralyse this city of 2.5 crore people. It is time to shift these meets to cities like Ahmedabad which is being planned to host the commonwealth games or other places. Infra push should be in non-metros too for hosting such events.”The AI summit in February is remembered for the complete inability to provide people attending it and those not attending it, reasonable convenience on Delhi’s roads. As the Hindustan Times reported on February 19, “Several people who attended the summit said they were forced to walk for kilometres to find a cab, as the entry of cars outside Bharat Mandapam was barred and entry to the nearest metro station was closed.”It described the situation outside the venue as being one of “total paralysis”. This too, “while global tech titans and world leaders have gathered for India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi to discuss the future of artificial intelligence and seamless connectivity”.Had such a great day at the India AI Impact Summit.But the way it ended (7:40PM) was a huge let-down.No cabs, no pre-arranged shuttle. “Road is closed, go for a walk.”Imagine how international visitors from must have felt.Not to mention differently-abled folks. pic.twitter.com/tcHjnQOxwK— Caleb (@caleb_friesen) February 18, 2026Walked almost 5kms to just get a cab.Govt has blocked all the gates and road and asking people to walk just because some VIP is coming.People are walking since 6pm and at all check points police is saying this is blocked.India AI Impact Summit 2026 – Themanagement is such… pic.twitter.com/O8yfWJv2Z7— Sahil Rajput (@_sahilrajput) February 18, 2026No lessons were learnt as just months on, in a response to unarmed youth marching to Jantar Mantar, on July 20 with enough notice to the government, there was a virtual traffic gag in the national capital and a state of disarray. This was compounded by the internet shutdown effected all around Jantar Mantar, to act as what the government would have hoped was a PR shield for the government, not letting images of a major embarrassment to it being relayed to the world. Not only were yellow barricades all over the widest streets in the country, the Delhi metro, which the government calls Delhi’s lifeline and which boasted of a daily ridership of 6.4 million Delhi-ites in 2025, was shut down.What the government is also intending to avoid perhaps are images of a flooded Pragati Maidan tunnel which traffic in monsoon ridden Delhi on a working day may generate, as it did in 2023.A year after being inaugurated in June 2022, the Pragati Maidan tunnel, which connects India Gate with Ring Road, witnessed water logging due to rain, during the G20 Summit in September 2023. The tunnel was used by delegates during the summit with officials saying that the problem persisted for only a few minutes.Metro shutdowns: Can governments be allowed to blanket shut metros, built on public money?For political reasons, as they were in July, can governments shut down public transport, built on public money and used by millions for a myriad reasons, most involving livelihoods? The annual metro budget has risen to Rs 29,550 crore in 2025–26. A Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister study on the metro system on urban households in January this year found that “metro infrastructure not only improves mobility but also strengthens household finances and supports long-term economic stability. With rising capital investment and integrated planning, metro systems are becoming key drivers of sustainable growth.”So can and should blanket shutdowns not triggered by fires or other safety hazards be easy decisions for governments to take?This is a serious question that has been posed by a petitioner in the Supreme Court. Yesterday, on September 10, Thursday, the top court has sought a response from the Centre on the petition “which questions the closure of 17 Delhi Metro stations during the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests held in Central Delhi over the NEET-UG 2026 question paper leaks.” A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant issued notice to the respondents Union and Delhi governments, the Delhi Police, and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation on the petition filed by Sparsh Kant Nayak, a resident of the national capital, reports The Hindu.In 2016, the shutdown of Washington, D.C.’s Metrorail system for 29 hours caused a huge uproar. Aniruddha Dasgupta, global director of the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, who is based in D.C. was cited by NPR as saying “This is very unusual. It’s unusual for a large important city or any city to actually shut down the whole metro system. It’s not a normal way of functioning for any transit system.” The reasons were many and especially one which damages the long-term reputation of public transport, pushing people back to their cars. “When public transport becomes unreliable, people are going to say ‘Metro is not dependable,’ [and] they’re going to buy a car. That’s the opposite direction in which we should travel”, he said. The government of India in a press release in 2025 had described the Delhi Metro as having “become the lifeline of the city by setting the epitome of excellence in the core parameters of MRTS, i.e. punctuality, reliability, and safety.”In war-struck Kyiv, in Ukraine, the metro is extended to facilitate lives of common persons. It was reported just yesterday, that “public transport has been allowed to operate for an additional hour. Public transport is in fact added on to allow people to go about their daily business in the middle of a war. The Kyiv Post reports, for example, that four special bus routes have been added, from Kyiv’s Central Railway Station during curfew hours to help passengers whose trains arrive late.The focus, in most democracies, is on enabling people to travel and commute freely, instead of locking them in because a few extra heads of state are in town.India has the ignominy of being seen as the ‘Internet Shutdown Capital’ of the world for five successive years due to cutting internet access for maximum numbers of people. From virtual shutdowns to now stalling physical lives of millions of city dwellers in its national capital has been a short journey.This article is updated with a part on 2023 G20 Summit and republished at 6.52 pm on the same day.