PUNE: Weekend revellers returning home on Sunday evening were trapped in snarls for over an hour on the Pune-Bengaluru highway.The congestion was the most severe on the pothole-riddled Pune-Sarola and Khed-Shivapur sections of the highway. “Vehicles were moving at a very low speed due to the potholes. We deployed additional manpower to clear the traffic, but (the jam) continued till midnight,” Amol Tambe, superintendent of police (HSP, Pune), said.A few potholes were a foot deep and filled with rainwater. Long queues of vehicles were seen on the highway, as drivers struggled to manoeuvre around the treacherous potholes.“We were returning from Mahabaleshwar. It usually takes us 3-4 hours to reach Pune city, but (on Sunday) it took us over six hours due to the traffic,” Sinhagad Road resident Prakash Mote said.As a temporary measures, highway safety patrol (HSP) and Pune Rural police personnel filled the potholes using roadside rubble, but they returned to their posts only after the traffic on the affected stretch of the highway returned to normalcy, a little after midnight.One official laid the blame at the feet of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). “We had written to NHAI as well as to the contractor responsible for the highway’s maintenance, but they did not look into this issue,” an HSP officer said.Another said that if the situation were to remain unaddressed, similar snarls would occur during the Bakri Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi festivals.“We are aware of the situation,” a senior NHAI official said. “The potholes are in bad shape because of the ongoing construction activity on this stretch. The problem escalated due to heavy rains. We will fill the potholes during the monsoon break,” the official added.Commuters, however, are far from convinced. “We pay toll to the authorities responsible for the maintenance of the road, but where is the maintenance?” Chandrashekhar Mote, who uses the stretch regularly, said.On Monday, rains lashed the city, throwing traffic out of gear in several parts of Pune in the morning peak hours. “Rains disrupted vehicular movement as many who generally use two-wheelers used cars to commute. People who wanted to avert traffic on Karve Road, due to the ongoing Metro rail project there, used narrow roads like Canal Road, and Prabhat Road, causing chaos there as well,” a traffic official said.

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