BENGALURU: Amid residents’ claims of potholes still dotting the roads in many city areas and shoddy works done by the civic body in filling up potholes, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Sunday declared to have filled 95% of the 3,176 potholes it had identified earlier. The High Court (HC) had set a deadline of Monday to fill up all identified potholes in the city.
“We worked till late hours as well as on a government holiday and Sunday to achieve the target set by the HC. We also had our fingers crossed that it should not rain till Monday,” said a BBMP official.
The civic body had submitted to the HC this week that it had identified 3,071 potholes in the city’s eight zones. During the course of the drive to fill them up, it had identified 105 new potholes. On Sunday, the BBMP claimed that it had filled about 3,000 potholes. “We have honoured the words of the court and have stood by our commitment. The rain gods too helped us,” said Mayor Sampath Raj. He said the pothole-filling exercise will continue after Monday, adding that the court’s observation on BBMP’s inability to fill potholes was a serious matter.
On Wednesday, the HC, based on a petition filed by four residents of Koramangala in 2015, had ordered the civic agency to fill up all potholes in the city by the next day. It had also passed scathing remarks on the BBMP’s inability to fill them up, saying it was better to shut down the civic body if it was not able to perform. In a sarcastic vein, it had also suggested naming the potholes after the engineers and contractors who had built the respective roads. On Thursday, the Court had extended the deadline to Monday.
Pothole-filling an eye-wash ?
Allegations of the civic body doing a shoddy work in filling up potholes were made in various areas during the drive. On Friday, a pothole was filled in the morning near MG Road. By evening, it had become waterlogged. On Saturday, a Twitter user tweeted pictures of a pothole in Thubarahalli being filled with gravel instead of asphalt. Citizens and opposition leader in the BBMP Padmanabha Reddy have also questioned the figure of just 3,071 potholes identified, claiming that the city had far more potholes.