Rain falls, potholes appear: Mumbai civic body gets 316 complaints in 17 days

191 of 316 pothole complaints yet to be looked into; officials asked to fix roads within a day.

Monsoon is here, and so are the potholes.

Potholes at Besant road, Santacruz. (Prabhat Mehrotra/ HT Photo)

From June 10 to June 27, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) received at least 316 complaints of potholes, exposing the poor quality of roads across the city.

The civic body has addressed 191 of them, and set a deadline for the road officials from areas whose complaints are yet to be looked into. The areas include Byculla, Bandra, Andheri, Goregaon, Ghatkopar and Mulund. “As of Thursday, more than 50% complaints in these wards were unattended. I have given the officials one day to resolve them,” said Vinod Chithore, chief engineer of the roads department.

“We received a pothole complaint on Wednesday midnight. We sent workers to the spot at 1.30am,” said an official of F-North ward.

Topping the list of pending cases is K-East ward in Andheri, where 12 of the 47 complaints are yet to be resolved. Ten of the 23 complaints received in Malad’s P-North ward are pending, while in Mulund’s S ward, 11 of the 24 complaints are to be solved.

Godfrey Pimenta, an activist from Andheri, said, “I have sent many complaints about potholes in Andheri, but they remain unattended. If the BMC claims they are attending to potholes within 24 hours, why are there so many potholes on roads?”

The civic body also claims its new German-made cold mix has worked well to fix potholes. The civic body ordered an additional 210 metric tonnes of the mix, after the initial trial with 10 metric tonnes.