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October 1-15, 2025
Condition of roads in Jammu city and its interiors remains as usual dismal as neither the vehicles nor the pedestrians are safe. The reason being vandalization of roads and abandoned pot holed roads. Traveling on these roads is always challenging. It is difficult to maintain the balance while traveling on these damaged roads that are prone to accidents and damage to pedestrians. Whether it is winters or summers or for that matter the rainy season, the condition of the Jammu roads remains pathetic.It can be easily said that the traffic management on the Jammu’s roads has turned criminal as the so called road widening has turned the city into a kind of inferno leaving no space for the commuters to travel with ease.Traffic jams are a norm .No one reaches his destination in time.In Spite of leaving their homes with proper planning being late is a norm in Jammu. What adds to this is the pollution and contamination of the air that people breathe,causing the respiratory issues.One wonders who is devising the policy to dig all the roads leaving no road for available for safe driving.The dismal condition of the Jammu’s roads and inconvenience to the public has been well summed up by one of the Jammu’s citizen’s in his social media post, giving vent to the common man’s grievance. He writes, “Accessing key destinations, Jammu Medical College Hospital, the airport, the railway station, or the High Court, has become an ordeal fit for an endurance test. Each route is a masterclass in administrative incompetence, where jams stretch longer than excuses, and detours lead everywhere except the destination.” He does not stop here and emphasizes traffic chaos and devastation of roads writing, “The mayhem now appears to have achieved permanence. The roads are dug, barricaded, and blocked in the name of “development,” but no one remembers when this endless development began, or if it ever intends to end. Highways leading to Pathankot, Delhi, or Srinagar tell the same story: dust, delays, and despair.” Indeed the vandalization of Jammu’s roads has reached the highways in the name of infrastructural development with alternate routes in mind for the traffic and commuters. Jammu-Kathua-Samba-Pathankot Highway has been reduced to rubble. At least from 2022 there is no considerable progress. Whole National highway from Lakhanpur and to Satwari has been dug with debris, dust, mud, rocks, pebbles scattered all around, leaving no space for traffic to ply. It takes more than three hours to reach Jammu from Kathua when Jam is at its peak and same applies to a commuter when he or she travels from Jammu to Kathua. The Bari Brahmana to Satwari stretch has been reduced to a virtual hell where people are stuck for hours with no sign of traffic police personnel managing the traffic efficiently. One fails to understand how the road widening plan has been executed when there is no alternate route in mind for the traffic movement. Now that the entire national highway has been dug, why is the road widening and construction work not being dug on the war footing? What is more surprising is that heavy trucks and numberless tankers are stranded on the highway leaving no space for the passenger transport to move smoothly. Not only that, these trucks and tankers could be allowed to play in the night when the passenger rush is low and the people going to offices are not plying their vehicles on the highway. The administration must set this traffic chaos right. Mere digging of roads and then making people fend for themselves is not the path towards the Jammu smart City. Jammu is jammed and is waiting for the end of traffic mis-management that is rendering Jammu redundant.
