BENGALURU: Outgoing Mayor Sampath Raj, whose term ended on Thursday, said tackling rains, stormwater drains and potholes will remain major challenges for the new city mayor who will be elected on Friday. Sampath, second-time councillor from Devarajeevanahalli ward, served as the 51st mayor of Bengaluru and third mayor in the present Congress-JD(S) alliance.
Claiming to have not taken even a day off, he set a record of conducting 39 council meetings despite the three-month break during the Assembly elections, including two bypolls. After he was elected mayor, Sampath promised to focus on resolving the problems of garbage and traffic congestion, but these still remain unresolved. In an interview with Ashwini M Sripad, Sampath speaks about his tenure as mayor. Excerpts:
You promised to solve the garbage and traffic issues, which still remain.
The garbage menace has come down. Moreover, in my tenure, the council passed a resolution to transfer the salary of Pourakarmikas to their bank accounts directly ... We also took a decision to start BBMP’s own garbage processing unit. Traffic congestion problem needs more attention though.
What about women’s safety on which you had made a statement on your maiden press meet?
We took a decision to install CCTV cameras at every ward and allotted Rs10 lakh per ward. This apart, we gave Rs 5 crore to the police department to install CCTV cameras for monitoring. We have also taken decision to introduce pink autos exclusively for women. We have called tenders which will be implemented in coming days.
Any work which you wanted to bring a change in, but could not do?
As there was code of conduct for Assembly election, three months was lost as we could not implement many decisions. The mayor’s tenure is one year, of which, three months went like this. We wanted to develop roads and bring some solutions for traffic snarls. Code of conduct should not be an excuse, but we had less time.
Potholes still remain...
Potholes are a universal problem. We should not have woken up after the High Court’s direction. This is again because the BBMP budget was approved in August, though we presented the budget in February... it was delayed for various reasons including the code of conduct. If it was approved in March, we could have taken asphalting of roads, at least 10-12 roads in each ward. Asphalted roads mean fewer potholes.