After a decade, key stretches, including RTO Road and South Avenue Road in Sathuvachari, on the Chennai - Bengaluru Highway (NH 48) in Vellore were being re-laid. Officials said that under the Smart Cities Projects, which was started in 2018, areas like Sathuvachari (Phase 1 & 2), Alamelumangapuram and Rangapuram that come under Zone-2 of the Vellore City Corporation was taken up for providing civic amenities including replacement of sodium vapour lamps with LED street lights, tiled footpath with steel railings for walkers and wide carriageway on key stretches in these areas. These neighbourhoods were chosen for the scheme due to its recent development as residential areas dotted with many government offices like Collectorate, SP office, banks, local courts and government housing quarters. “After many years, damaged roads are being re-laid by the Corporation. Along with traffic police, civic officials have to prevent illegal parking of vehicles on these newly laid roads,” said S. Kumar, a resident in Vellore. However, officials said that many key stretches were damaged due to laying of pipelines for the underground sewage system (UGSS) that was carried out under the Centre’s AMRUT scheme (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation). Also, these stretches were dug for laying ducts for telephones and internet cables and water pipelines, resulting in severe hardships for residents in these areas. These civic works were undertaken for nearly a decade. As a result, the re-laying work of these stretches under the Smart Cities Projects was slow. In other words, of 655 km of roads that have to be re-laid under the scheme, only around 200 km have been re-laid since the start of the project four years ago. With the newly elected Corporation council, Mayor Sujatha Anandakumar along with the Corporation Commissioner, P. Ashok Kumar, have been pushing officials and the private contractors to re-lay the damaged stretches in these areas immediately. Subsequently, funds have been alloted by the civic body to re-lay these stretches on a war footing as the first council meeting of the Corporation will be held soon. For instance, the 1.5 km-RTO road in Sathuvachari has been widened to its original width of 50 feet and re-laid with facilities like LED street lights, tiled walkers’ path with steel railings and storm water drain at a cost of ₹7.94 crore, officials said.
