Newly asphalted Pune roads dug up again; 2,388 digging permissions issued since 2017

Pune, October 27, 2026: Recently asphalted roads in the city are being dug up again to lay underground utility lines. This has raised concerns about the waste of public money and is causing trouble for motorists. Roads are repaired after the digging, but in many places potholes and uneven surfaces remain, making travel difficult.

According to data from the road department of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), 2,388 permissions have been granted since 2017 for laying underground optical fibre cable (OFC). Roads have been dug up over a total length of 1,495 km for these works.

It is not only OFC cables. The city's roads are also dug up for water pipelines, drainage lines, power cables, gas pipelines and other utilities. The PMC grants permission for such work to government, semi-government and private agencies after charging a fixed fee.

The road department generally allows digging between October 1 and April 30. Agencies are expected to complete road repairs by the following month. Before the monsoon, the corporation itself also repairs and re-asphalts roads.

Officials say permission is not granted to dig recently asphalted roads. Even so, there have been cases of roads being dug up within days of asphalting. This raises questions about coordination between the corporation and the agencies providing utility services.

The digging fee varies with the agency and the method of digging. Private companies are charged Rs 12,192 per running metre, while the rate for the electricity board is Rs 2,350 per metre. Digging using horizontal directional drilling (HDD) costs Rs 4,000 per metre, and the fee for digging by excavating pits is Rs 6,160 per metre. Other government agencies are charged Rs 6,096 per metre, which is 50 per cent of the standard rate for private companies.

Repeated digging and the repairs that follow add to the burden of maintaining the city's roads. If repairs are not done properly, commuters have to negotiate potholes and uneven surfaces, which adds to the hardship and can also affect road safety.

Before 2017, the PMC had granted 649 road-digging permissions, all of them for laying underground OFC cables. Records show fees of Rs 485.81 crore for these works. Overhead cable permissions granted before 2017 fall under the corporation's electrical department. After 2017, the road department has not granted any permission for overhead OFC cables. The electrical department has granted two permissions for overhead cables, and a temporary permission has been given for cable work linked to the disaster management cell.

Another major problem is that Pune has no single digital map showing the exact location of the underground network. Water pipelines, drainage, power cables, gas pipelines and internet cables are laid under the roads by different agencies, but the PMC has no map showing where all of them run.

As a result, officials sometimes have to take the help of retired officers to locate old water pipelines before starting new work. Water pipelines are also often broken during digging, which interrupts supply and raises repair costs. The lack of a single record of underground utilities makes it hard to plan digging and increases the risk of damage to existing infrastructure. Better coordination between corporation departments and utility agencies, and a complete digital mapping system, could help stop repeated digging, protect the underground network and cut wasteful spending on road repairs.