Karnataka High Court deadline ends today, potholes remain unfilled

Court likely to take the civic body to task again; BBMP says new strategy in place to fix potholes

When the Karnataka High Court (HC) took the Bruhat Bengaluru Manahanagara Palike (BBMP) to task over potholes on city roads, every Bengalurean had heaved a sigh of relief. The court has even set a deadline — October 23 — but sadly, nothing has changed and after a brief spell of rains, the potholes are back. It remains to be seen what the BBMP will tell the court now and it’s quite likely that the court will pull up the civic body, for the umpteenth time.

Though the HC had given strict instructions to BBMP to fill all the potholes in the city by October 23, the civic body couldn’t keep track of the potholes across the city. To put it bluntly, the number of potholes is too big to be even fixed.

Still, the BBMP has claimed to have filled most of the potholes, but they keep appearing or reappearing on major roads and other ward roads.However, BBMP’s officials claim that new submission will be made to Chief Secretary of Karnataka TM Vijay Bhaskar in a meeting that will be held on October 23.

Manoj Kumar Meena, Special Commissioner, Projects, BBMP told Bangalore Mirror: “The BBMP has been encountering the same problem of potholes every year. Despite our best efforts to fix the potholes, it keeps coming back. Thus we feel this is the time that BBMP should change its approach towards asphalting and filling potholes. We will start examining whether the asphalt work and potholes filling work are sound in terms of road engineering. We will soon examine our approach to filling potholes and asphalt work.”

Exclusive fund soon

Speaking about the new submission, Meena said, “The BBMP has been taking up pothole-filling works after the rains. Thus, we will submit the proposal to start the maintenance works of roads before the monsoon every year so that the roads may not develop potholes at all. Also, we have decided to fix potholes stretch-wise,instead of marking each pothole. Even if the stretch is having one pothole, it will be called as a pothole stretch ,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a bid to have an exclusive fund to fix potholes, the BBMP has decided to float tenders for the annual maintenance of roads and pothole-filling work. “An exclusive account will be opened for the potholes and road maintenance so that the work could be taken up immediately. Currently, we have to wait for tenders and other procedures. But by having an exclusive account, we can attend to the potholes at the earliest,” Meena added.