BENGALURU: In a move that may finally lead to pothole-free roads in Bengaluru, the Karnataka High Court on Tuesday indicated that it would pass directives holding the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike responsible for any pothole-related accidents in the city.
The directives, if issued, will be similar to what the Bombay High Court had passed, fixing liability on the municipal body for accidents occurring due to potholes. A division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice H T Narendra Prasad directed the civic agency to submit the latest centralised data listing out the number of potholes in the city. The court was hearing a public interest petition filed by Vijayan Menon and others.
Asking the BBMP for its methodology in identifying potholes, the court said that the data had to be submitted on July 23, the next date of hearing. The counsel for BBMP submitted that the condition of the roads in the city was poor because of the work taken up by civic agencies like BESCOM, BWSSB, BMRCL and others. The counsel also told the court that the BBMP’s engineers were inspecting potholes on a daily basis.
Countering this, the petitioners claimed that should that be the case, the PIL would not have been necessary in the first place.