OPPOSITION parties in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation staged a walkout during Wednesday’s Standing Committee meeting to protest what they claimed was “poor preparedness of the civic body”, which led to flooding across Mumbai on August 29. Congress corporators said the city’s roads were in a terrible condition and claimed there were more than 19,000 potholes on Mumbai’s roads.Alleging a nexus between the civic body and contractors, Leader of the Opposition and Congress corporator Ravi Raja said 19,300 potholes remain neglected.
“All parties had blamed the BRIMSTOWAD project for the flooding. But the BMC cannot say that the amount of rainfall was more than the capacity of the drainage system. There was 5-6 feet of waterlogging everywhere and the BMC has managed to take Mumbai backward by 50 years,” he said.
Congress corporator Asif Zakaria said that waterlogging remained an annual occurrence. “On the day of the floods, no warning was given on Facebook or Twitter. The civic body has to take big steps to improve,” Zakaria said.
Defending the administration, however, Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta said the rain of August 29 was an extreme weather event and claimed there were no potholes on the roads taken up for repairs before the monsoon.
“The city received 325 mm of rainfall between 8 am and 8 pm on that day and 60-70 per cent of the rain was between 3-5 pm, which left areas such as Bhandup, Matunga, Kurla flooded,” he said.
Insisting that advisories were issued through the traffic department, he added, “There were no potholes on the 138-km road on which repair work was conducted. Work is yet to be taken up on 186 km. We will conduct a meeting on Friday to decide the next course of action after the flood.”
