Project to lay road from Rajaram Bridge to Warje may face more delays as all these years PMC did not bother to start obtaining land
Project to lay road from Rajaram Bridge to Warje may face more delays as all these years PMC did not bother to start obtaining land
Planned in 2002, the laying of a road from Rajaram Bridge to Warje was recently cleared. But there still seem to be some hurdles to be overcome for the project to be completed. While the road promises to come as a relief to thousands of motorists using the Karve Road, the Pune Municipal Corporation has still not started the land acquisition process, a state of affairs that is likely to delay the project further.
Delay upon delay: Shops at the chowk near Rajaram Bridge that need
to be relocated to acquire the land for the proposed road. Pic/Krunal
Gosavi
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The plan was cleared by the Standing Committee of PMC a few days ago. According to sources, the road project was stuck in land acquisition procedures and the PMC was confused over the amount of Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) to be offered.
The 2.5-km road would have allowed residents from the western parts of the city to reach areas like Swargate and Shastri Road without using Karve Road. The road was included in the Development Plan (DP) of the city, the approval for which also took time and further delayed the project, according to officials.
The project has two parts. One is the road from Rajaram Bridge to Warje and the other, from Rajaram Bridge to Mhatre Bridge. The PMC has only partly finished the laying of a 100-feet-wide road from Rajaram Bridge to Mhatre Bridge, since some land is still stuck in the acquisition process. According to local independent corporator Ujjwal Keskar, the PMC should have started the acquisition long ago but the administration woke up to it only now.
"The PMC was confused over the amount of TDR to be awarded, which I clarified should be 1.2 from the state government. I have also written countless letters, but what I had to say has fallen on deaf ears," Keskar said. "Moreover, the PMC has directed the private contractor to carry out the acquisition which is further delaying the construction. Traffic will have increased tenfold by the time the project is completed."
PMC Additional City Engineer Srinivas Bonala said it was natural for projects to get stuck in land acquisition process and they were trying their level best to complete the road. "The Standing Committee has recently approved another project to lay a road from Sangamwadi Bridge to Kharadi along with this current project, which in total costs about Rs 307 crore," he said.
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