Deadline 2 days away, BMC yet to repair 150 potholes

With just two days to go for its self-imposed deadline, the civic body is likely to come up short on its promise of ensuring pothole-free roads to Ganesh mandals this year.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had assured all mandals in the city that the roads would be cleared of all potholes before the Ganesh festival.

With 150 potholes yet to be filled on city streets, the BMC has insisted that these were those reported by citizens on the civic body’s grievance forum.

Additional municipal commissioner Sanjay Deshmukh said, “These potholes are the ones that have been reported by citizens. There may still be potholes that have not yet been reported. We have a routine procedure of checking for potholes, but the ones we repair without complaints are not counted in the number we officially declare.”

Meanwhile, the BMC said potholes on the freeway, highways and expressways have to be repaired either by the PWD or the MMRDA, and it did not have data about the condition of these roads.

Insisting that it was committed to repairing potholes before August 21, the BMC, however, said they would be repaired only on a temporary basis.

“The BMC will start its annual road repair work from October 1, and all roads will have to undergo repair anyway. If we take up repair of potholes now through the tendering process, it will take up to three months for the process to finish and work to start. By then, we would have started our annual repair work,” said Mr Deshmukh.

A senior civic official in the roads department said, “We spend a lot of money on repairs. Roads get scarred by the pandals erected on them by the Ganesh mandals. So, it is preferable to take up full-fledged repair work after the festival,” he said.

However, Mr Deshmukh said all reported potholes would be taken care of by the deadline committed to by the civic body. There are presently 150 unattended potholes on the streets, in contrast to 385 that were there last year same time. The BMC has attended to 3,449 potholes of the 3,599 reported this monsoon.