Bombay High Court to monitor roads repair

Mumbai: The Bombay high court recently said it will monitor the progress of road repair in the city every month.  A division bench of Justice V.M. Kanade and Justice P.R. Bora was hearing a suo motu public interest litigation (PIL) regarding potholes.

Recently Justice Kanade had called up a special hearing in the judges conference room so that high ranking officers from various departments could point out the steps taken by them in the repairing of pothole. Officers from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), public works department (PWD), Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited (MSRDC), Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) and the traffic police attended it.

The hearing was also called to ensure that there is proper co-ordination between various agencies that are expected to maintain the roads. Another important reason the court called the hearing was to solve the problem of occurrence of potholes during every monsoon, which has become a common phenomenon for about the past 10 years.

During the hearing, Sanjay Deshmukh, additional commissioner of BMC, had given a presentation before the court explaining who is responsible for maintaining which roads in Mumbai.  He explained project works that have currently been undertaken and preventive measures to be taken prior to the monsoon. Mr Deshmukh also laid out measures to improve the condition of roads.

While giving the presentation to the court, the BMC, PWD as well as traffic police had given assurances that they will complete a majority of repair work on roads, before monsoon. The court then made it clear that it would like to monitor the situation every month to see whether the time schedule given by authorities is being followed.

The court also suggested that the traffic police should give notice in advance to the public at large that repairs would be undertaken at a particular road on a particular day, so that the public would avoid those roads. The court also said “as long as the main stretch of the roads and main arteries connecting to cities are not replaced by new roads, occurrence of potholes will continue.”

While suggesting that BMC “should examine the kind of material that is used in foreign countries for the repairing of potholes,” the court also directed the state government to coordinate with BMC and other agencies so they can jointly repair the entire stretch of roads.