BMC engineers held captive by MNS workers for 5 hours

Three sub-engineers – Kakde,Shah and Singh – were held in the maintenance department office,said Deshpande. “I have no personal grudges. We even shared snacks with the officials.”

Accompanied by a group of MNS workers,Deshpande had gone to the ward office to demonstrate the working of BMC’s pothole tracking website,voiceofcitizens.com. “I decided that one way or another,this had to be taken care of. An hour after entering the office,I spoke to MNS MLA Nitin Gilkade,who gave me the go-ahead,” said Deshpande.

A senior civic official,who did not want to be named,said,“We are not going to file an FIR as it would draw attention away from the real problem even though such incidents of force are not viable methods for inducing better response to pothole repairs.”

Contractor booked for negligence

Twenty days after a 28-year-old civil engineer died after hitting a pothole,Kurar police framed charges against the road contractors of Malad-western expressway,J Kumar and Ameya Developers,for negligence. Police began to investigate after Umesh Shinde’s brother filed a complaint.

On July 2,Shinde was returning home to Andheri and was riding an Activa. His bike hit a pothole and he slipped off and sustained serious head injuries and died on the way to the hospital.

BMC asks engineers for regular status reports

Following the death of three persons on account of potholes in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR),BMC has asked its road engineers to file a report on the status of roads in Mumbai every fortnight. Additional municipal commissioner S V R Srinivas issued the circular Monday night ordering the engineers to ensure speedy repair of road in a planned manner. “This is going beyond the road management system as we are asking them for regular reports on the status of the road. The engineer must travel the stretches of road they are in charge of and fix the potholes independent of what is reported on the civic pothole-tracking website,” said Srinivas.