Roof collapses at New Delhi airport killing one

The roof of a terminal building at New Delhi’s international airport collapsed in heavy rains early on Friday, killing one person months after Narendra Modi inaugurated a refurbishment project.

Images posted online showed vehicles crushed under giant steel girders at the departure forecourt of Terminal 1, one of several projects formally launched by Mr Modi, India’s prime minister, in March ahead of the country’s general election.

The terminal is used for domestic flights only and airport authorities said all departing flights had been cancelled until early afternoon.

“Due to heavy rain since early this morning, a portion of the canopy... collapsed around 5am,” they said in an online statement.

“Emergency personnel are working to provide all necessary assistance and medical aid to those affected.”

Other terminals were operating as normal, as were arrivals at Terminal 1.

“Eight people have been injured, one person is dead. Rescue operations have been completed,” Atul Garg, the director of the Delhi fire services, told AFP.

Infrastructure spending has been a priority under Mr Modi, and the New Delhi airport – named after his assassinated predecessor Indira Gandhi –  is one of the country’s flagship projects.

But safety and construction standards in the country remain a concern. Last year, more than 40 workers were trapped for nearly two weeks after the road tunnel they were working on in Uttarakhand collapsed.

Last August, at least 18 labourers working on a railway bridge being built across a ravine in the Northeastern state of Mizoram were killed when it collapsed.

At the scene, Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, the civil aviation minister, told reporters: “We are taking this incident seriously...I want to clarify that the building inaugurated by PM Narendra Modi is on the other side and the building that collapsed here is an old building and was opened in 2009.”

Mr Modi only took power several years later, but politicians from the opposition slammed the prime minister after the incident on Friday.

A Congress party spokesman said Mr Modi had gone on an “inauguration spree” ahead of the polls, where Rahul Gandhi’s organisation defied expectations and deprived Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party of its overall majority in parliament, forcing it into a coalition with allies.

Mr Gandhi’s sister Priyanka – a senior Congress figure – posted on the social media platform X: “Will the chief inauguration minister take responsibility for this poor construction work and this corrupt model?”

A roof section at Jabalpur airport in Madhya Pradesh – another of the projects inaugurated by Mr Modi – also collapsed on Friday, reports said, with no one injured.

New Delhi has been hit by heavy rains in recent days as the annual monsoon reached the Indian capital after a long stretch of heatwaves and punishingly high temperatures.

The downpours have brought the city to a standstill, with images shared by the city’s police showing personnel clearing trees and helping residents stuck in waterlogged areas.