A delegation from the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation (CSMC), led by Minister Atul Save and Standing Committee Chairman Anil Makariye, met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in Mumbai on July 8 to press for ₹1,510 crore in state funding for road-widening work across the city. The Chief Minister reportedly responded positively and referred the request to the Public Works Department, according to Lokmat Times and the Free Press Journal, though formal approval is still pending.
A year of cleared roads with nothing built on them
The request covers four stretches: Padegaon Road, budgeted at ₹500 crore for the first phase; Paithan Road from Chakradhar Swami Chowk to the municipal limits, at ₹350 crore; the Cidco Bus Stand to Harsul T-Point road, at ₹360 crore; and Jalna Road between Nagar Naka and Cambridge Chowk, at ₹300 crore. CSMC has already removed encroachments along 10 major roads to clear the way for widening, but the corporation says it lacks the funds to actually build the wider carriageways. That gap between clearance and construction has now stretched to roughly a year, according to the Free Press Journal, leaving residents with the disruption of encroachment removal but none of the promised relief from traffic congestion.
What it means for residents
For commuters on these corridors, shopfronts and structures have been cleared from the road edges, but the roads themselves are no bigger than before. Officials cited by Lokmat Times argue the affected stretches need to be widened to 60 metres to handle projected traffic growth, which suggests the current bottlenecks will persist, and likely worsen, until the state releases funds. Because CSMC has proposed a phased release rather than a lump sum, even a positive decision from the state would not translate into work starting on all four roads at once. Padegaon Road’s first tranche, the single largest ask in the package, would likely move first if funds are approved.
What to watch next
The Public Works Department’s response to the Chief Minister’s referral is the immediate thing to track, since Fadnavis’s office has only forwarded the request rather than sanctioned it. Sambhajinagar residents have separately been contending with delays on the city’s ₹2,700-crore-plus water augmentation scheme, so the roads request lands against a backdrop of the civic body already under pressure to show it can convert big-ticket state funding into finished infrastructure rather than stalled projects.
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.
Sources: Lokmat Times, Free Press Journal