India, March 10 -- The newly elected mayor of Bhiwandi has opened his tenure with some tough talk: fix the city's chronic traffic congestion or enforce the daytime ban on the entry of heavy vehicles into the city. That was Mayor Narayan Choudhary's message to the traffic authorities and civic administration after he announced his ultimatum on Monday.

Heavy vehicles have always been a defining feature of Bhiwandi, a powerloom town that has morphed into a modern logistics hub on the edge of Thane city. Clogging the city's arterial roads and spilling into smaller lanes are multi-axle trailers, container trucks and tempos ferrying goods to and from Gujarat and Nashik to various places in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), including the Ja...