Irked by craters, Deepak Nagar residents repair roads

Nagpur: Irked by the lack of efforts from Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) to repair crater-riddled roads in north Nagpur, residents of Deepak Nagar repaired the road on their own. A video of citizens pouring sand and boulders in craters on this road has gone viral on social media.
After Sunday morning’s heavy rain, residents of the locality like Mangesh Yadav, Vishnu Tiwari, Vinod Yadav and Dharmendra Yadav collected construction debris dumped outside many houses there and filled the craters. But as the entire stretch of road has developed crater-shaped potholes, all these efforts of citizens proved futile.
Bhagwat Yadav, a local resident, told TOI that the condition of roads in their colony was pitiable. “The road was built almost two decades ago. Nothing has happened since then. Today one can only see craters. During monsoon, driving on this road means playing with our own lives,” a miffed Salauddin Khan said, who claimed that he fell twice and sustained injuries this monsoon.
Pappu Shahu, a scrap dealer and a resident of the locality, said he had recently used two bags of plaster of paris to carry out patchwork in front of his house. “The stretch poses a greater risk in monsoon when crater-size potholes fill up with stagnant water, leading to accidents,” he said.
TOI tried to contact NMC’s officiating chief engineer Leena Upadhyaya but she could not be reached despite several attempts.
Former corporator Manoj Sangole said the condition of tar roads in this part of the city is pathetic. Despite complaints and memorandums to NMC, NIT, North Nagpur MLA Nitin Raut and Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari, nothing has happened, he said.
“I had also filed a petition in the high court about the pathetic condition of five roads, including Kapil Nagar to Deepak Nagar, Kamgar Nagar to Tegiya Colony and Tyrewala Chowk and from Gurunanak Pharmacy College Road to Dixit Nagar (Mhada Colony) in this part of the city,” said Sangole.
Data obtained from NMC revealed that the civic body has repaired 3,245 potholes in this financial year, which comes to around 40,717.82 square metre of area. Of them, NMC’s hotmix department repaired 2,336 potholes, while Jet Patcher and Insta Road patcher machines were used to carry out repairs of 615 and 294 potholes across the city limits.
Motorists, however, expressed anguish over the methodology of NMC to repair potholes. After the civic body’s pothole repair drive, rides became bumpy, they said, adding that the repair works too were shoddy.