Bhugaon villagers raise money to concretise road

With authorities not heeding to their repeated demands to repair the road passing through their area, the villagers of Bhugaon Gram Panchayat have fixed the stretch in their locality through crowdfunding

Pune: With the state and local authorities not heeding to their repeated demands to repair the road passing through their area, the villagers of Bhugaon Gram Panchayat have fixed the stretch in their locality through crowdfunding.

With authorities not heeding to their repeated demands to repair the road passing through their area, the villagers of Bhugaon Gram Panchayat have concretised the stretch in their locality through crowdfunding. (KALPESH NUKTE/HT)

“We had held a protest on August 9 in 2018 demanding the authorities to concretise the road, a national highway, that passes through our area. With no positive reply from the officials, we decided to take up the matter into our own hands. People think that as the road goes through the village, it comes under the gram panchayat, but it is part of national highway,” said Ramesh Sanas, one of the villagers and member of the group that initiated the road concretisation project.

With a population of 45,000, Bhugaon village has many schools, educational institutions and housing societies.

“We gave the road concretisation project to one of the villagers who is into construction business. We all contributed from our pockets to cover the project and the 600-meter road was completed in last 15 days. After completing the mandatory road tests, the 600-metre-long and seven-foot-wide concretised road was officially inaugurated on Thursday,” Sanas said.

The villagers said that the stretch sees a lot of vehicles, especially during weekends, because of the rush of tourists. Bhugaon village is one of the main villages on Paud Road that connects from Chandani Chowk towards Paud, Tamhini Ghat and other tourist spots on the route.

Another villager Jitendra Ingawale said, “Villagers contributed ₹75 lakh to cover the cost of the project. The youth of the village managed traffic round the clock when the road project was on with 10 to 15 youngsters on hourly shift stationed on both the sides of the road. They used to block two-wheeler traffic on one side and four wheelers on the other side of the road for 20 minutes to carry out road work.”

Pankaj Maheti, who resides near the village, said, “The work done by Bhugaon villagers is commendable as their joint effort will address the traffic congestion issue. The villagers have worked together to construct the road without taking help from any government agency.”