Merely 520-m road developed in Smart Pune in past five years; ruling BJP focused on renovation of existing roads
Pune : NpNews24 Online – Pune Corporation | The outgoing ruling BJP always harped on Smart City. However, the party neglected road works that had the highest demand in the past five years. It has merely developed a 520-m road. No new road was built during the party’s rule. On the contrary, many footpath works were given to the contractors, who favoured the ruling party. Many existing roads were dug frequently.
In all, 11 villages were merged into the PMC four years ago. Last year, 23 more villages were merged. An area of over 500 sq km is under the jurisdiction of the civic body. The number of roads is less in comparison to the growing population and use of vehicles. Traffic crawls on city roads. Many of these roads are dug. To address this issue, a circular bus route has been created and mini buses charging a nominal fare of Rs 10 ply on this route in the peth areas. Journey of commuters coming from suburbs has been broken due to this scheme.
Particularly, over Rs 500 crore were allocated each year in the civic budget for the road department in the past five years. The ruling BJP and civic administration could have at least taken up road works in the merged villages, which has not been done. Concretisation of some good roads and renovation of the same footpaths was done under the Smart City concept. Works on the existing roads, footpaths and cycle tracks were conducted in Baner, Balewadi and Aundh under the Smart City project. Over Rs 500 crore has been spent on these works. Beautification of Jangli Maharaj road, Gokhale (FC) road, Ganesh Khind road, Pashan-Sus road, Swargate-Katraj road, Bibvewadi road has been done. These beautification works include cycle tracks, footpaths for senior citizens, plantation, etc.
The city has roads of around 1,400-km length. These roads are less in comparison to the geographical area of the city. Development of parking spaces and vegetable markets has been ignored. Rehabilitation of hawkers has not been sped up. Therefore, the existing roads have been encroached upon.
The new road in Kothrud:
The civic administration has given it in writing that the lone road of 520-m length and 18-m width was built in the past five years. It has been built between the Mahatma housing society, where BJP state president Chandrakant Patil lives, and Wonder Futura connecting Mumbai-Kolhapur national highway.
The road department was allocated Rs 3,200 crore in the past five years, out of which Rs 1,200 crore has been spent. It is true that all civic works were affected due to the pandemic. However, the department had undertaken concretization and footpath works during this period also. A good road connecting Sangamwadi on Kharadi-Shivane road was dug and built again. A contractor close to the ruling party was paid Rs 20 crore for this work.
The following roads could not be completed for years due to land acquisition and other technical issues:
– Shivane to Kharadi
– Katraj to Khadi Machine Chowk (Kondhwa)
– Road along the canal from Vadgaon Budruk to PL Deshpande Garden
– 18-m DP road at Mayur Colony
– Dhanori octroi post to DY Patil College road
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