An arterial stretch connecting Guindy, Madhya Kailash and the Rajiv Gandhi IT Expressway, Sardar Patel Road carries heavy traffic throughout the day and serves several major institutions, including Anna University, IIT-Madras, Gandhi Mandapam, Lok Bhavan and Adyar Cancer Institute.

The widening project was taken up by the Highways department to ease congestion and improve traffic flow along the corridor. However, the pace of work has been slow over the past two months, leading to increased traffic snarls and inconvenience to commuters.

Ragavi, a student of Anna University, said the delay had caused significant hardship for users. “This is one of the city’s most important roads, but the construction has been moving very slowly for the last two months. We’re facing severe traffic congestion daily. The government should speed up the work,” she said.

An official from the Highways department said that the work had paused temporarily to allow the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Ltd to shift high-voltage cables. “TNPDCL had deferred the work during the election period because Anna University functioned as a strong room and any disruption to power supply could have created operational issues,” he added. “It has now assured us that the cable-shifting work will be completed within 2-3 days, after which road widening activities will resume.”

Rejecting reports that the project had been delayed due to a spike in bitumen prices amid the Iran-US conflict, the official said no highway projects in Tamil Nadu had been suspended on that account. “The department follows a construction material price index system, under which payments are revised periodically to account for fluctuations in the prices of materials, including bitumen,” he pointed out.