This is why high court pulled up the BMC
Mumbai: IN June, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), had confidently told the Bombay High Court that all potholes in the city had been filled by May 31—the deadline set by the court.
But on Wednesday—after three days of heavy rain—the division bench of Justices R M Lodha and S J Vazifdar took suo moto notice of the bad condition of roads and asked the BMC if the Rs 250 crore spent on repairs had gone down the drain.
The court ordered the BMC, Mumbai Metropolitan Road Development Authority (MMRDA) and the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) to file an affidavit within three weeks stating what action they were contemplating against contractors or officials responsible for the shoddy work.
In 2004, the BMC had formed a technical advisory committee headed by V N Mirani. As per the high court’s directions, the civic body, and MMRDA and MSRDC—also responsible for maintaining roads—are supposed to follow the recommendations of the Mirani Committee.
One of the salient features of the report is that the value of the tender contract should be Rs 5 crore onwards.
‘‘At present, the government bodies are giving contracts to the lowest bidder and that really compromises the quality of the roads. The contracts are given from Rs 0.9 crore onwards,’’ said Dr Sandeep Rane who has filed a petition in the high court regarding poor quality of roads.
Other recommendations of the Mirani committee include: a site engineer to inspect the construction work and a quality control laboratory on site.
Among the recently-repaired busiest stretches now pothole-ridden again:
J J Flyover
Who is responsible for upkeep: MSRDC. Its managing director Ramnath Jha said: ‘‘This is one bad patch which we had repaired during our pre-monsoon survey, but clearly the problem has re-emerged. A team is waiting for a dry spell of a few hours and it will be repaired at the earliest to avoid any traffic troubles.’’
Western Express Highway
Who is responsible for upkeep: MMRDA. Executive engineer S R Nandgirkar said: ‘‘There are parts of the 25-km WE Highway we haven’t concretised yet, like at Malad and Kandivli. That project will take at least a month-and-a-half to complete. But our labour and material is ready. When the rain stops, we will repair the potholes.’’
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