A resident of Mumbai has claimed to have collected more than 27,000 photos and videos of potholes as part of his campaign to highlight poor condition of roads. Navin Lade also wants the city to figure in record books for its bad roads.
However, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has dismissed Mr. Lade’s campaign as a publicity stunt.
Mr. Lade launched the campaign on July 17 and has claimed to have collected 27,366 photos and videos of potholes till now with help from his team and locals. The photos and videos have been uploaded on a dedicated website, www.mumbaipotholes.com. He claimed support for his campaign from people who have been victims of poor condition of the city roads.
Mr. Lade has approached the Guinness Book of World Records, the Limca Book of Records, the India Book of Records, the World Book of Records, and the Golden Book of Records for including Mumbai as the city with most potholes though no such category exists.
Mr. Lade’s name figures in the India Book of Records for ‘Maximum Collection of Newspaper Articles on Eyes’. “The Guinness World Records, the Limca Book of Records, the India Book of Records, and others do not maintain any category for most potholes in cities. But I am after them to create such a category and hopeful to get it,” he said.
Mr. Lade said his drive aims to create public awareness and shame the BMC. “Efforts to address pothole menace are nothing but a drama. Mumbai has become a death trap. Potholes have become silent killers and are also causing life-long pain in spine and joints.”
Asked what mechanism he has in place to avoid duplication in counting potholes, Mr. Lade said, “We have received over 40,000 complaints so far containing locations and names of the complainant. Our sheet filters the names that appear twice reporting from the same location. Besides, our members have their own fleet of vehicles. They go to the spot and verify the potholes individually so that nothing is counted twice.”
When contacted, a senior BMC official termed the campaign a publicity stunt. “A single pothole can be reported by various persons coming from different places. We have developed a mechanism to attend to potholes quickly as and when reported,” he said.