‘All PWD roads will be pothole-free’: Delhi govt launches mega drive

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said it was the first time that such a big scale road inspection was being done to free the PWD roads from potholes caused by wear and tear and the rain.

The Delhi government on Sunday launched a mega drive to fix potholes on roads managed by its public works department (PWD).

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced the launch of a city-wide exercise from October 5 to identify potholes on roads (HT Photo/ Sakib Ali)

According to government data, a total of 1,897 reports were filed with the PWD by MLAs through an app launched by the department to complain about potholes and bad roads. The maximum — 1,181 — number of complaints were related to uneven road patches, while the total number 583 potholes were found on city roads.

Under the campaign, 50 AAP MLAs inspected 25 km road stretch each in their constituency along with a PWD engineer. They located the potholes and the rough patches and uploaded it on a mobile app. The PWD will now repair these potholes and rough patches.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said it was the first time that such a big scale road inspection was being done to free the PWD roads from potholes caused by wear and tear and the rain.

The CM had on Tuesday announced to launch the city-wide exercise from October 5 to identify potholes on roads.

“Even though a small percentage of Delhi’s roads are under the Delhi government, lakhs of vehicles make use of them… It will be like physical audit of PWD’s roads,” he said in a series of tweets.

He said that if the work of another department is going on, the PWD had been directed to wait for the work to complete before carrying out the repair work.

As many as 133 reports were filed about cases where the deficiencies in the roads were due to other departments’ ongoing repair works. The CM also said that potholes created by rainwater will also be repaired.