Road names jam traffic comittee

The committee has its work cut out in the meeting scheduled this month too. Seven of the eight major proposals deal with giving new names to lanes, bylanes and chowks.

“Instead of concentrating on more serious issues like tackling pot-holes or the concretisation of roads, the committee is pre-occupied with giving names which are of no use to the public, as very often the new names tend to be long and complicated,”commented the Samajwadi Party corporator Yusuf Abrahani. Names such as `Patharekshatriya Vakthruttwotejak Samaj Marg’, off Cadell Road (now Veer Savarkar Marg) in Dadar (west) were approved without any debate on whether anybody would be able to pronounce it. Consider this lengthy tongue-twister brought up in the committee in November last year. `Bhai alias Vasantrao Laxmanrao Pradhan Chowk’ after a Dadar-based advocate.

He alleged that most of the time interested parties bribed their local corporators to give a particular name to a road or a chowk.

Since the Mayor-in-Council came into being in April last year, nearly 200 roads and chowks have been renamed. The procedure is fairly simple: the local corporator is first approached with the suggestion. The corporator puts forward this suggestion in the meeting of councillors and the concerned ward officer, which is then relayed to the Roads and Traffic Committee, if the proposal is found to be deserving.

The new name is then officially approved by theGeneral Body Meeting of the BMC. The entire exercise takes about five to six months, with almost no hurdles in between.

However, a few years ago, the House witnessed a heated debate when it was proposed to name a road after the slain gangster Kim Bahadur Thapa, who was the Shiv Sena Corporator. The objection was duly recorded in the House and the proposal was rejected.

However, the Municipal Secretary Sudha Khire reasoned: “I agree most of the time goes in the naming of roads and chowks, but then that is one of the duties of the corporation.”

However, another member of the Roads and Traffic Committee pointed that not all such renamings are an exercise in futility. “On December 13 last year, a young man, Bharat Mestri, had lost his life fighting an armed chain snatcher in Malad. Hence it has been proposed by the municipal councillor Ashok Patel to name the chowk at Malad as `Martyr Bharat Budhaji Mestri Chowk’.”

The proposal was passed by the members unanimously in the meeting last month and itwill now be brought before the general body meeting after which the chowk will be named.