BMC makes bizarre 66 pothole claim

Even as Mumbaikars have been commuting at snail’s pace for the last four days owing to bad roads, the BMC on Friday claimed that currently there are only 66 unattended potholes on roads looked after by the civic body. The corporation claimed that all other potholes must be on flyovers and highways maintained by the public works department (PWD) and Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC). The city has been witnessing massive traffic jams in the suburbs and south Mumbai. However, the BMC claimed that the traffic jams were because of waterlogging and not because of bad roads.

Interestingly, the BMC’s own reports do not show any major waterlogging in the city in last four days. BMC claimed that it had received a total of 338 complaints in the month of June from four portals, including its pothole complaint Android phone application, the helpline 1916, the MCGM website and the BMC’s Facebook page.

Due to the multiple platforms that potholes can be reported to, the BMC has not been able to determine the exact number of potholes. A civic official of the road’s department said, “Several times the same pothole complaint is received from several users, or on more than one platform. So we are not able to ascertain exactly how many complaints we have received.”

The BMC received 188 complaints upto June 28, and cleared a major bulk of them (132) on June 29. With a balance of 56 potholes unattended, on June 30 the civic body received 150 complaints. It then attended to another 140 complaints on July 1. Presently, there are 66 potholes which are unattended by the BMC.

Sudhir Naik, deputy municipal commissioner of the general administration of the BMC said, “We cannot comment on how many of the complaints were genuine, but each time we have received a complaint we have attended to it within 24 to 48 hours, as is mandatory.”

Presently, there are two other bodies which take pothole complaints from citizens — the PWD which specially looks after the maintenance of highways, and the MSRDC which looks after the state of the flyovers.

The official added, “The number of potholes on highways depends on the complaints received by both these departments. The BMC does not have a separate budget this year for potholes, but we have taken care of all those that the citizens have complained about.”

The BMC is now set on categorising the potholes reported on roads falling within the defect liability period and potholes on non-defect liability period.