Work on Pune’s 1.2-kilometre Baner-Pashan Link Road is set to resume after the Pune Municipal Corporation disbursed about Rs 68 crore in compensation for land required to complete the project, ending a 12-year delay in land acquisition.
Rajesh Bankar, who is in charge of the PMC’s roads department, said the civic body had completed the paperwork and paid the total compensation. He said the remaining construction would begin after the land acquisition process is completed.
The road, planned as a 36-metre-wide link, was sanctioned in 1992 and construction began in 2014. However, work remained incomplete because land acquisition for a 200-metre stretch was pending. The unfinished section has held up completion of a road intended to improve connectivity between Baner, Pashan, Sutarwadi and surrounding areas.
The PMC expects the completed link road to provide relief to about 2.5 lakh residents in these neighbourhoods, which have experienced growing traffic pressure. The civic body has not yet stated a fresh completion date in the information available, but the remaining construction is dependent on completing the acquisition process.
The project’s delay had also led residents to seek judicial intervention. In 2021, the Baner-Pashan Link Road Welfare Trust approached the Bombay High Court, asking it to direct the PMC to complete the road within a fixed timeframe.
In August 2023, the court directed the PMC to acquire the required land and submit a timeline for both the acquisition and the remaining construction. The civic body did not implement those directions within the required period and was subsequently pulled up by the court.
In April last year, the High Court ordered the PMC to acquire the land within two months and complete the road within four months after acquiring it. The latest compensation payment addresses the land-related obstacle identified as the principal reason for the stalled work.
The next stage is completion of the land acquisition, after which the PMC is expected to restart construction on the remaining portion of the Baner-Pashan Link Road.
