NMC adds 12 road sweeping machines and four poclain excavators at a cost of Rs 7.09 crore

The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has added 12 road sweeping machines and four chain crawler excavators to its fleet to strengthen mechanised cleaning of the city. The machines cost a total of Rs 7.09 crore.

Mayor Nita Thakre inaugurated the newly purchased machines at the NMC central workshop on Friday. With the 12 new road sweepers, the corporation's existing number of such machines has doubled. This will allow large roads, flyovers and other stretches to be cleaned in a more organised manner.

The aim of the new deployment is to extend cleaning to all 10 zones of the corporation and to give special attention to key roads and high-traffic stretches.

One machine for each zone

Deputy Commissioner Rajesh Bhagat said that 10 of the 12 new machines will be given to the respective zone offices so that every zone has its own machine for cleaning. The remaining two will be run by a central team. This team will mainly focus on cleaning flyovers and the large roads that need special and regular cleaning.

The 12 machines were bought for a total of Rs 5.58 crore under the Swachh Maharashtra Mission 2.0 of the Centre and the Maharashtra government. Each machine costs Rs 46.50 lakh and can hold three cubic metres of waste.

The machines have been built by Baxy Ltd on Tata Motors chassis. They are designed to remove dust, soil and waste lying on the road surface. They are expected to reduce dependence on manual sweeping and make road cleaning more effective and more frequent.

Four poclains for silt in rivers and drains

The NMC has also bought four chain crawler excavators, commonly called poclain machines. They were acquired for Rs 1.51 crore under the 2025-26 annual plan of the Nagpur District Planning Committee.

Each excavator has a capacity of five tonnes and a bucket capacity of 0.22 cubic metres. Unlike ordinary earth-digging machines, they are meant for difficult and tight spaces, especially narrow stretches of rivers and drains and the areas under bridges.

They will be used to remove silt, waste and other obstructions from drainage channels where ordinary machines often struggle to work. They are expected to strengthen the NMC's efforts to maintain the river and drains and to improve access to the difficult stretches where routine cleaning remains a challenge.

At the inauguration, Mayor Nita Thakre stressed the need to improve cleaning services and to make effective use of modern technology to keep Nagpur clean. She directed the administration to ensure that the staff operating the new machines are properly trained so that the machines are used correctly and to their full capacity.

The larger fleet will give the NMC more mechanised capacity for road cleaning, river cleaning and desilting of drains. However, the outcome will ultimately depend on whether the machines are deployed regularly, maintained properly and whether cleaning work is monitored continuously in all zones.