Repair work in progress on Kargil Road in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 5: For every damaged road there is one remedy — a trip by the chief minister.

The badly damaged Kargil Road that links Palaspalli to Pokhariput was lying in neglect for over a year. But all that will become a thing of the past with the public works department repairing the stretch on a war footing.

And the urgency is not without reason — chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s convoy will take the road, which is about 1.5km from his residence, for the inauguration of an urban micro-business centre in the city tomorrow.

It’s not just the PWD, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has also engaged labourers to prune bushes and clean stretches alongside the road. The corporation also removed garbage dumped along the road to spare Naveen from the nauseating smell.

The road is used by local residents of Pokhariput, Gandamunda, Jagmohan Nagar, Jagamara, Badabari, Khandagiri and Dharma Vihar.

Repair work was taken up almost a year ago. However, after the contractor died, his wife expressed her inability to finish the job. Since the last eight months nothing had moved.

“The PWD authorities did not listen to our plea. Suddenly, they are repairing it before the CM takes the road. ,’’ Pokhariput resident Nrupa Kishor Patnaik said.

PWD assistant engineer Sisir Mishra failed to justify the timing and why the department had to wait for the CM to take the road to repair the stretch.

“We had planned to repair the road after the contractor did not complete the job. An amount of Rs 8lakh had been allocated to repair the stretch and also a portion of the road near Palaspalli-Bhimatangi flyover,’’ Mishra said.

“It’s good that the damaged road near our colony has been taken up for repair by PWD just before the chief minister’s visit,’’ said Sukanta Sahoo, president of Palaspalli Residents’ Welfare Association.