PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has conceded it had no information regarding any traffic survey of the 335 six-metre lanes proposed to be widened to nine metres, besides population, tree count and the cost of shifting the service lines along them.
“No information available” was the PMC’s stock reply to the Right to Information (RTI) application of activist Sarang Yadwadkar seeking basic data about the controversial proposal to widen the streets, based on which notices had been served to hundreds of housing societies.
Yadwadkar told TOI, “They (PMC) said their act of seeking citizens’ views on the proposal proves that they are transparent, but they did not share the basic details of the proposal. Tell me, on what basis do they expect citizens to lodge objections or offer suggestions?”
PMC superintending engineer Rajendra Raut said since the shortlisted roads and lanes were in various parts of the city, the executive engineers were asked to conduct assessment of roads in their respective areas. “They (executive engineers) will have the data about the roads in their jurisdiction and will share it with citizens during the hearing,” he said.
The PMC’s notice asking affected citizens to file objections to the road-widening proposal was published in newspapers on December 29. Two days later, Yadwadkar filed the application under the RTI Act seeking details of traffic surveys, studies or analysis that suggested the need for widening these lanes.
The other information he sought included the current and the projected population along these streets, total impact on the area because of the rise in FSI (floor space index), estimated cost of shifting the service lines, the amount of compensation to be paid and the total number of trees along these lanes.
On January 18, the PMC replied to the RTI application stating that “no information is available” regarding all 10 queries that Yadwadkar raised. It added, “Documents, maps and notices regarding the proposal are on the PMC’s website. If you are not happy with this information, you can go for an appeal.”
The TOI scanned through the PMC’s website but could not find any information related to any of Yadwadkar’s queries.
The month-long deadline for submitting objections to the road widening ended on January 28 and the appeal would have been decided after that. “So, if at all any information was shared, it would have been of little use after the date of filing objections,” Yadwadkar said, adding that he had filed the objection over the widening plan to meet the deadline and would soon make an appeal under the RTI Act to seek the information.