Will consider geo-tagging manholes to track theft of covers, BMC tells High Court

Senior advocate Anil Sakhare and advocate Rohan Mirpury submitted an affidavit to a division bench of Acting Chief Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala and Justice Sandeep V Marne.

The affidavit was in response to the contempt petition filed by lawyer Ruju Thakker, alleging that civic authorities had failed to implement the High Court orders of February and April 2018, suo motu (on its own) PIL, directing repairing of potholes along all arterial roads in the city and devising an uniform mechanism to redress citizens’ grievances related to bad roads and potholes.

During earlier hearings, the HC had called open manholes in Mumbai ‘death traps’ and had warned BMC that if some one dies due to open manholes in Mumbai, officials of the civic body will be held responsible.

The BMC said that as on date, monitoring of manholes/open drains/sewers/ventilation shafts is done through the mukadams (supervisors) and other field staff available with the ward offices on a regular basis. It also said daily inspection of manholes is being undertaken in respective wards.

Chahal said that steps are being taken to ensure no open manholes are left unprotected, and barricading and effective warning to citizens is provided.

He said necessary instructions have been issued by the chief engineer (roads & traffic) to all the officers concerned in each ward, to prepare a road-wise inventory of manholes, chambers (rectangular, circular or otherwise) by mentioning their ownership. They have to specify whether they belong to internal departments of the BMC or external agencies which provide telecommunication services, electricity supply or piped gas, so that the specific maintenance agency can be contacted to avoid incidents of unattended and unmonitored manholes, said Chahal.

He said the said inventory is necessary because size and material of manhole covers used by various agencies vary from each other and are unique.

The civic body said that BMC which has about 2050 kilometres of roads under its area, the work of concretisation for 990 km has been completed and the same for 265 km is ongoing and resurfacing work is being done on nearly 110 km roads. Moreover, the tenders have been floated for concretisation of 397 km roads and work shall be taken up in the next phase.

It said that innovative techniques including Rapid Hardening Concrete, Geo-polymer concrete are being used on trial basis for pothole filing and till date no cracks have been observed at the locations where these materials have been used.

The BMC also added that the tenders have been floated for the cement concretisation of roads and QR codes will be put on barricades. “On scanning the said QR Codes any passer-by/citizen can access the information about the name of the work, nature of contractor, date of starting and completion of the work, etc.

It also said that necessary steps have been taken for protecting rights of visually impaired persons in coordination with NGO and wosk is in progress in some wards on pilot basis which includes placing tactile tiles on the pavements and further guidelines will be passed