  Context. The advent of wide-band receiver systems on interferometer arrays
enables one to undertake high-sensitivity and high-resolution radio continuum
surveys of the Galactic plane in a reasonable amount of telescope time.
However, to date, there are only a few such studies of the first quadrant of
the Milky Way that have been carried out at frequencies below 1 GHz. The Giant
Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) has recently upgraded its receivers with
wide-band capabilities (now called the uGMRT) and provides a good opportunity
to conduct high resolution surveys, while also being sensitive to the extended
structures.
  Aims. We wish to assess the feasibility of conducting a large-scale snapshot
survey, the Metrewave Galactic Plane with the uGMRT Survey (MeGaPluG), to
simultaneously map extended sources and compact objects at an angular
resolution lower than $10''$ and a point source sensitivity of 0.15 mJy/beam.
  Methods. We performed an unbiased survey of a small portion of the Galactic
plane, covering the W43/W44 regions ($l=29^\circ-35^\circ$ and $|b|<1^\circ$)
in two frequency bands: 300$-$500 MHz and 550$-$750 MHz. The 200 MHz wide-band
receivers on the uGMRT are employed to observe the target field in several
pointings, spending nearly 14 minutes on each pointing in two separate scans.
We developed an automated pipeline for the calibration, and a semi-automated
self-calibration procedure is used to image each pointing using multi-scale
CLEAN and outlier fields.
  Results. We produced continuum mosaics of the surveyed region at a final
common resolution of $25''$ in the two bands that have central frequencies of
400 MHz and 650 MHz, with a point source sensitivity better than 5 mJy/beam. We
plan to cover a larger footprint of the Galactic plane in the near future based
on the lessons learnt from this study. (Abridged)
