Ujjain has always resisted the march of time, clinging to its ancient city of temples, ghats, bazaars and British-era offices. Now, as Ujjain prepares for Simhastha 2028, its maps are being redrawn, hurtling the sleepy temple town towards a new modernity — carved through its old streets with bulldozers, widened roads and concrete.On September 27, a crowd gathered outside the Shahi Masjid, where the administration was preparing to remove the portion of the mosque within the proposed road alignment, as protests raged over road-widening projects in Ujjain ahead of the 2028 Simhastha. Hours later, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav took an axe to his grandfather’s ancestral home in Abdalpura.The demolitions came as the administration raced against time for the Simhastha Mela 2028, for which the government has approved 128 projects worth about Rs 13,851 crore across 10 departments. For Yadav, Simhastha has become his government’s defining project, with the administration effectively mobilised around a single task: transforming the ancient temple town before pilgrims arrive. Yadav personally began the process of removing the portion of the house that falls in the alignment of a road being widened ahead of Simhastha 2028. (Express photo)On the ground, the transformation is unfolding on a scale rarely seen in Ujjain’s modern history. Highways are being carved into the city’s approaches, railway lines and bypasses are being built, roads and bridges widened, kilometres of new ghats taking shape along the Shipra, and water and sewerage networks being laid underground.What is taking shape is not simply a city preparing for a festival, but a centuries-old temple town being physically remade into a modern pilgrimage city. Simhastha Mela Authority director Jagdish Aggarwal’s office in Kothi Road, a leafy neighbourhood, is less a conventional government chamber these days than a control room for one of Madhya Pradesh’s biggest infrastructure exercises. Project officers come in with updates, meetings are held with swamis and other stakeholders, and meetings with the chief minister are woven into a schedule dominated by Simhastha.Every Thursday, Aggarwal sits with the collector and deputy collector for a review devoted to the same question: how to get Ujjain ready for 2028?“We are preparing keeping in mind the possibility of around 40 crore people coming to Ujjain,” Aggarwal said, explaining why projects that would otherwise appear excessive for Ujjain are being taken up simultaneously.Story continues below this ad Chief Minister Dr. Yadav inaugurated the Mahakal Lok police station.But there’s also a human cost involved: the eroding trust among residents. Yasin Khan, a local, welcomed the road-widening project but frowned upon the speed at which the administration proceeded.“When the houses were marked in my neighbourhood, both Hindu and Muslim families came out and demolished portions of the houses ourselves. But the administration barely took us into confidence. It’s better to demolish on your own than wait for the administration to come with a bulldozer.”Changing UjjainThe most visible changes are on Ujjain’s roads. The Ujjain-Indore six-laning project, estimated at Rs 1,692 crore, is under construction, while a separate Indore-Ujjain greenfield four-lane corridor, estimated at Rs 2,935 crore, is also being developed, SMA officials said.A 98.73-km Ujjain-Jaora greenfield four-lane corridor, costing about Rs 5,017 crore, received its foundation stone in July. Planned with seven flyovers, three railway overbridges, eight major bridges, 22 medium bridges, 36 underpasses and 430 culverts, it is targeted for completion by December 2027. It is intended to provide an east-west connection towards Jaora and the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway while taking long-distance traffic away from the city, SMA officials said.Story continues below this ad Chief Minister Mohan Yadav inspecting road works“More than 80 percent of road and connectivity works had reached the ground, with the road component around 70 percent complete. Around 15 bridges are under construction, and we expect five or six to be ready for inauguration by December,” Aggarwal said.More than 10 five-star hotels are either coming up or planned in Ujjain, Aggarwal said, alongside smaller hotels and guest houses.Along the Shipra, the government is building approximately 29.2 km of new ghats and associated works, stretching from the Shani temple area towards the Nagda bypass. The Rs 778-crore project is intended to spread bathing and pilgrim movement over a longer stretch of the river, officials said.At Gaughat, Akram Khan, a project supervisor for a private company, said they would meet the deadline for the restored ghat by December. The restoration is taking place against an old British water works department office, built in the 1930s. Only the old English chimney remains as the Madhya Pradesh government races ahead with the modern ghat.Story continues below this ad“We began work in May and employed over 100 workers per day, paying them at least Rs 800 per day to finish this work. The reason we can race through the project is that the government’s fully focused on this. From making roads to providing us with electricity and water connections, they raced through all that to help our project,” Akram said.The second major riverfront project is the Rs 919.94-crore Kanh closed-duct diversion scheme, intended to prevent polluted water carried by the Kanh River from entering the Shipra. The scheme involves a 30.15-km diversion system, including an 18.15-km cut-and-cover section and a 12-km tunnel.Inside Ujjain, the road programme is being executed through municipal packages, with roads widened around the old city and Mahakal area. One of the most contentious stretches is the road from Khajurwali Masjid towards Ganesh Chowk, where widening work has now moved to the ground and brought the Shahi Masjid within the road alignment. Official at construction siteProtests — and race against timeStory continues below this adAcross Ujjain’s old neighbourhoods, the transformation is not happening only behind construction-site barricades. It is happening at people’s front doors. Hindu and Muslim families alike have been taking hammers and pickaxes to portions of homes, shops and religious structures marked for demolition under the new road alignments.Lokendra Nigam, a cloth merchant from Chattri Chowk, lamented the removal of a small portion of his shop. “We are doing it for the Simhastha. Of course, we understand the devotees need space to move. But we should be adequately compensated. We feel the authorities don’t listen to us.”At the Simhastha division of the Madhya Pradesh Public Works Department, Executive Engineer Praful Jain studies the map of Ujjain on his computer, tracking projects for Simhastha 2028.The PWD’s Simhastha division has 20 works underway, Jain said, including an underpass, a bridge and road and connectivity projects. Among the most significant is the 629-metre Hari Phatak underpass, intended to provide an alternative route towards Mahakal Lok.Story continues below this ad“More than 100 structures, on average, have been identified for impact across the underpass and elevated-corridor projects,” Jain said.The focus, he said, is on “resource and manpower planning, machinery planning and resolving issues on multiple fronts simultaneously, so that construction can begin at the appropriate time rather than waiting for one project to finish before another starts.”Jain said the department is increasingly relying on precast technology to compress timelines. Beams, columns and girders can be prepared in advance and brought to sites for assembly. The road network is also intended to create capacity beyond the festival. “Four-lane and six-lane interconnected roads are being developed at different locations,” Jain said. “The Simhastha works, in that sense, are being designed as infrastructure that can continue to serve the city after the festival. We want to develop international-level infrastructure across the world, like the Temple Mount in Israel or Mecca in Saudi Arabia.”