The work will cost PMC Rs 23 crore, which it will secure under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. "The road stretch will undergo a major change. We will set up storm water drains and other utility services. The road will be concretised just like the Wakdewadi stretch," Municipal Commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi told The Indian Express on Monday.

PMC superintending engineer Vinay Deshpande said the road stretch would be of six-lane, with two paving blocks and two-metre wide footpaths on both sides. "The concretising of the road will be done from the ACP's office to Khadki railway crossing. The Bopodi stretch is not under this plan," he said.

The narrow highway stretch, which has been in need of a major surgery for years, has spelled nightmare for lakhs of two-wheeler riders and motorists who use the highway daily. The fate of the road began to change only after Praveensinh Pardeshi took over as PMC commissioner. A day after he joined PMC in May, Pardeshi sought to know his priorities in Pune.

When told that roads should top his agenda and that PMC should take over the Khadki stretch from the KCB, Pardeshi said, "For citizens' safety's sake, I will have no problem in taking over the road."

Pardeshi did not stop at merely making a promise. In the monsoon, when potholes and craters showed up, Pardeshi wasted no time in sending his team to repair the road. The PMC team, say civic activists, did a "marvellous job" as there were hardly any potholes during the monsoon compared to the previous year when 200 potholes had sprung up in June itself. Pardeshi's action was probably the first instance of its kind in Pune when a municipal commissioner went out of his way torepair a road which was not in his jurisdicition.