A year after CM’s announcement, no concrete action on Mumbai’s Rs 6,000-cr road project

All civil engineering works in Mumbai get stalled for five months, between June and October every year, owing to the monsoon. However, civic officials claim that their priority is to keep these roads motorable by repairing all the existing bad patches and that concretisation will be taken up only after October, once monsoon gets over.

Mumbai has a network of 2,050 kilometres of roads that falls under the jurisdiction of the BMC and of these, 990 kilometres are of cement and concrete (CC), and of the remaining 1,060  kilometres, concretisation of 270 kilometres of roads was taken up in 2022.

There are also time restrictions due to traffic. Express file

After the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government came to power in July 2022, the CM had announced that Mumbai’s roads would be made CC and pothole-free by 2024.

Following this, the civic body announced the concretisation of 397 kilometres of roads and floated tenders worth Rs 5,800 crore in August, 2022, making it the most expensive contract for roadworks in the city’s history.

While this tender was scrapped in the first week of November due to inadequate response from bidders, later in the month, a fresh tender for this project was floated again at a cost of Rs 6,070 crore and five contractors were given work orders.

The work orders were issued on January 18, 2023, a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the mega road concretising project during his rally in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) along with a slew of civic infrastructure projects.

According to the tender document, the concretising work is supposed to be finished within 24 months (excluding monsoon months). However, the civic body’s record states that till the first week of June, not a single kilometre of the 397 kilometres of roads has been concretised yet.

Where the work stands

The 397 kilometres of roads includes 910 stretches, including 214 in the island city, 182 in the eastern suburbs and 514 in the western suburbs. All these roads have been identified as “Project Roads” by the civic body’s roads department. The work order for the island city has been given to M/S Roadway Solutions Infra Limited, while the work order for the eastern suburbs has been awarded to, M/S Eagle Infra India Limited.

Three firms — M/S NCC Limited, M/S Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited and M/S Dineshchandra R Agrawal  Infracon Private Limited — have been awarded the work for western suburbs.

The five firms are based in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Ulhasnagar (Maharashtra) and Pune. All of them have previously taken up major infrastructure projects under the Union Ministry and several state governments of India, some of which are the Samruddhi Mahamarg, Zojila  Tunnel, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (Kurla) and other state and National Highway projects in Mumbai.

The roads department records mention that at present, these contractors take up only repair of “bad patches” on these project roads and not concretising the stretch.

Bad patches refer to uneven surface, potholes, craters and rough edges on the roads that affect its longevity and smoothness, posing risk to riders. The measurement of bad patches is recorded in square metres, while the status of completion of roads is recorded in metres or kilometres.

The data shows that in the island city, 16,375 square metres of bad patches are supposed to be repaired before monsoon this year, of which progress has been achieved on 6,634.7 square metres (39 per cent) till June 5.

Similarly, in the western suburbs, 77,794 square metres of bad patches are supposed to be attended, of which 19,378 square metres or 24.91 per cent has been achieved. In the eastern suburbs, 25,505 square metres of bad patches are to be addressed, out of which 8,639.8 or 33.87 per cent has been achieved. There was no record for the completed stretch of roads that were taken for concretisation under this mega project.

Administration speaks

P Velrasu, additional municipal commissioner (projects), said, “The work orders were issued in January and 40 stretches of roads in the suburbs were earmarked for concretisation in the first phase. However, there was only a few months left for monsoon, and with rain, the work would have stopped midway. Therefore, initially we asked the contractors to continuously improve the bad patches on the existing roads. The tender clauses state that the contractors will be responsible for maintaining all project roads for the period of contract.”

The BMC in its tender clauses had also included stringent conditions, which included that no joint ventures would be allowed, the civic body had also issued work orders at par rates that would save approximately around Rs 400 crore to the civic body.

“Also, the work for road concretising that we had issued last year is already ongoing due to which many roads are already being dug up, if more roads are dug in one go, vehicular movement would be affected during rain. Therefore, the priority was to keep these roads in a motorable state to ensure that traffic movement is not affected. We figured out the bad patches and asked the contractors to maintain them continuously. This is a calculated decision and all the project roads that have been taken up would be concretised in the said time,” Velrasu said.

Civic sources stated that the firm that was given work order for taking up the road works in the island city delayed starting of work, following which the civic body had issued a show-cause notice to the contractor. When The Indian Express contacted these firms, none of them replied.

Another senior civic official on the condition of anonymity stated that concretisation of these roads could only start from October, once monsoon gets over.

“Since these roads are falling under the project roads, their sole responsibility of maintenance lies with the contractors. They may use bitumen, asphalt or concrete blocks to repair the bad patches, throughout the monsoon season. Once, the rain gets over, concretising works will start full-fledged,” said the official.

“Between October 2023 and May 2024, we are eyeing to concretise 120 km of roads in Mumbai. If the contractor delays the project beyond the 24-month deadline that has been given to them, then we will be imposing a penalty,” the official said.

Challenges ahead

Civic officials said that the delay in starting the work immediately after issuing the work order was on account of several factors, including the complexity involved in carrying out road development projects in a busy city.

“When you make a highway, there is no obstruction, but for doing roadworks in a city like Mumbai, there are multiple challenges, one of them is that you cannot shut the road entirely and this work needs to be done in phases. There are also time restrictions due to traffic,” said an official.

Stating that most of these firms are new in this area, the official said that they take their time to chalk out the methodologies for working in a city like Mumbai.

Civic officials also stated that stringent conditions laid down in the contract clauses, including the contractors not allowed to appoint local firms, have also led to the delay in starting the work, since the assembling of manpower and machinery is also taking time.

Another key challenge is Mumbai’s weather as during rain, the soil also becomes loose and the cement used to make the concrete also loses its strength.

“All major utilities such as electrical cables, telephone and fibre lines run beneath the road, and therefore digging the roads during rain will expose them to water that may lead to accidents. All these have pushed the start of work by five more months,” the official said.