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Journalism of Courage
With three days to go for the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has failed to repair potholes in the city. The civic body has also missed its own deadline of August 25 for completing the repair works on roads that are primarily used for bringing the Ganesh idols to the mandals.
“Last week, we visited the spots along with the civic officials. While they claim the works are on, they haven’t finished it on major roads that are used for the procession every year. If they fail to finish the work in another two days, we might also approach the Chief Minister regarding the issue,” said Naresh Dahibhaukar, president of the Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti, an umbrella body for all the Ganesh mandals in the city.
Earlier in August, the Samiti had submitted a list of 3,000 potholes with photographs to the civic body, but it claims that the BMC has failed to repair most of the roads.
While 4,911potholes were recorded on the civic body’s pothole-tracking website http://www.voiceofcitizen.com till August 6, the day the civic body had announced that it would fast-track the process of filling up potholes for the festival before August 25, the number increased 9,652 potholes as of Monday.
Of the total number of potholes, the civic body claims to have finished repair works for 8,271. The highest number of potholes, 774, were recorded in the K/West ward (areas of Oshiwara and Andheri), followed by 752 potholes in the R/Central ward (areas like Gorai and Charkop).
“We have visited most of the spots mentioned in the list but the number of potholes are far lesser and the repair works for all the roads is on schedule,” said additional municipal commissioner S V R Srinivas, in-charge of the roads department.
Meanwhile, the civic body has also decided to withhold permissions for setting up pandals in the city unless the mandals pay for the cost of the repairs for the pits dug on roads during last year’s Ganeshotsav. The civic body has to collect a total of Rs 2 crore from the mandals as last year’s fine.
“We had decided to collect the fines through property taxes last year, but could not as the mandals do not own any property. We have withheld the permissions and are devising a new way to recover the money,” said another civic official.
tanushree.venkatraman@expressindia.com
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