Potholes: CM demands quick action, long-term solutions

Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan called a special meeting on Saturday to discuss the state of Mumbai's potholed roads — an issue first raised by HT and subsequently pursued via the Pothole Horror campaign.

Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan called a special meeting on Saturday to discuss the state of Mumbai's potholed roads — an issue first raised by HT and subsequently pursued via the Pothole Horror campaign.

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At the special meeting, which was attended by municipal officials, the heads of state road agencies and experts from Indian Institute of Technology-Powai, Chavan asked the BMC and state government agencies to repair roads on a war footing with whatever resources available and use modern technology to prevent potholes in the future.

Chavan also asked officials to set up a mechanism to monitor quality of road construction, directed the BMC to inspect roads before every monsoon and repair them immediately, and asked both civic and state governments to implement a five-year programme to repair existing roads and build better ones.

"I have discussed short-term and long-term measures to check the menace," Chavan said after the meeting. "People are agitated because of the city's bad roads. The large number of potholes is just unacceptable. We need to work on preventive maintenance of the city's roads."