Civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Monday said so far, around 9,500 potholes have been identified across the city.
This is just the beginning of the process and more potholes will be identified and filled up in the coming days, said a civic body official, requesting not to be named.
“This (9,500) is not the final number as the procedure has just been started and is the data is only two to three days old,” BBMP special commissioner KV Trilok Chandra said.
He said that this will be an ongoing exercise in the city. “Once the rain subsides, we will use hot mix from our own batch and fix the potholes properly,” Chandra added.
On May 9, the BBMP had said that it will start a resurvey of potholes even as many accidents have taken place in Bengaluru leading to loss of lives due to the civic apathy.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, at least 18 deaths were reported in 2020 and the number accounts for 85% of all such cases reported in the country and is higher than the combined total of similar causes in other major cities, including Mumbai and New Delhi.
“With the FixMyStreet internal app — which has some technical problems now — we will identify the location of each pothole within three days. By Thursday, another meeting will be held to determine the exact number of potholes with geo location and then from next Monday we will open it up for public viewing who can add to the list, in case we have missed out on something,” BBMP chief commissioner Tushar Girinath had said.
{{/usCountry}}“With the FixMyStreet internal app — which has some technical problems now — we will identify the location of each pothole within three days. By Thursday, another meeting will be held to determine the exact number of potholes with geo location and then from next Monday we will open it up for public viewing who can add to the list, in case we have missed out on something,” BBMP chief commissioner Tushar Girinath had said.
{{/usCountry}}Bengaluru comes to a standstill at the slightest hint of rain as it exposes the fault lines in non-existent planning and policy for the city. The city of over 12 million residents, is the biggest earner for the state coffers and has an annual budget of around ₹10,000 crore.
Though Bengaluru is witnessing unseasonably rains in May, the BBMP has never shied away from using the same excuse every year.
Also, it is not for the first time that the BBMP and successive state governments have assured to fix the pothole problem. By chief minister (CM) Basavaraj Bommai’s own admission, over ₹20,000 crore have been spent in the last five years on road-related works in the state capital.
According to the BBMP estimates, one kilometre of a two-lane road under the Smart City costs anywhere between ₹7.5 to ₹11 crores (including underground ducts), and the same for a tar road is around ₹80 lakh to ₹1.3 crore.
The Bommai-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, in December last year, had said that only 1,344-km roads, out of the over 11,200km, was motorable in the city.