Narendra Nagar underpass dug up for no rhyme or reason

 

 

By Shashwat Bhuskute

 

Nagpur’s endlessly tormented commuters have been handed yet another masterclass in administrative confusion, this time at the Narendra Nagar railway underpass, where the Public Works Department (PWD) has half-closed the route, dug it open, and then, quietly admitted there is currently no sanctioned plan to execute. For a corridor that has already put citizens through a decade of water-logging, diversions and monsoon dread, this fresh dose of uncertainty is a special kind of civic punishment. For weeks, the underpass remained partially shut, allegedly for a Rs 9 crore flood-mitigation project meant to install high-capacity pumps, reconstruct drains and finally end the yearly submergence. Traffic was squeezed into a single carriageway, creating predictable peak-hour gridlock. Motorists from Chhatrapati Nagar, Shatabdi Square and surrounding areas crawled through the bottleneck, reassured only by PWD’s confident timelines and the promise of a permanent fix. Except now, according to PWD World Bank Division officials themselves, that earlier plan has been scrapped. A new proposal is being drafted from scratch. This immediately raises the obvious question: if nothing is approved, why was the underpass dug up in the first place? The road has been ripped open, barricades thrown in, diversions imposed, and thousands inconvenienced, despite the department having no final blueprint to execute. This isn’t a minor oversight. Narendra Nagar RuB is one of the city’s most critical and most vulnerable links on Inner Ring Road. Even without rain, the stretch is slippery, with minor accidents reported regularly. In monsoon, it turns into a knee-deep trap. Yet, the agencies involved seem comfortable letting a key urban artery sit in limbo while they debate what to build and when. Citizens, already exhausted by years of patchwork repairs, choked drains, malfunctioning pumps and endless traffic snarls, are now stuck with a half-closed underpass and zero clarity. The old plan is dead; the new one doesn’t exist yet. The only thing moving smoothly at Narendra Nagar RuB is confusion. And in the end, it’s the general populace that is paying the price for administrative mess, as they are more bothered with reaching their work place in time.