Pune, 24 June 2025: Despite having funds, the much-needed Katraj-Kondhwa road widening project remains incomplete for the past seven years. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had started the project in 2018 to ease traffic in South Pune, but land acquisition issues have stalled the work.

The state government sanctioned ₹140 crore, half of the required ₹280 crore, for acquiring land after PMC reduced the planned road width from 84 meters to 50 meters due to difficulties in getting landowners to accept TDR and FSI instead of cash compensation. However, in the last year, only ₹9.57 crore has been spent as the land acquisition process has been slow.

Out of the necessary 94,000 sq.m., only about 46,456 sq.m. has been acquired so far. Frequent meetings with the District Collector’s office have failed to accelerate the process, leading to traffic chaos and fatal accidents along the partially widened stretch.

Newly appointed Municipal Commissioner Naval Kishore Ram has reviewed the project and promised to speed up work in coordination with the District Collectorate. He assured that completing the project is a priority and special efforts will be made to resolve land acquisition hurdles.

Interestingly, this is the fourth commissioner to handle this delayed project after Kunal Kumar, Vikram Kumar, and Dr. Rajendra Bhosale. The original deadline was three years, but the project has now entered its seventh year without completion.