Rs. 250 crores spent on asphalting roads to remove potholes. The May 31 deadline set by the Chief Minister to get city roads in better shape has expired. But, with a delayed monsoon ready to arrive any day, Bengaluru’s roads remain filled with potholes, guaranteeing both a dangerous and messy drive for motorists.
What’s worse is that there simply seems to be little haste in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) to move forward on filling potholes. The agency hopes to start work on major, arterial and sub-arterial roads only by June end. By then, the monsoon is expected to be in full fury defeating the whole purpose of attempts to expedite the work before the rains.
BBMP officials had identified over 20,000 potholes in the second week of May and took up a special drive to fill them. The administrator had released Rs 1 lakh as an emergency grant to each of the 198 wards for filling potholes.
While Python 5000, an automated pothole filling machine, had taken care of over 1,400 large potholes in the last two months, even some of those filled have opened up again.
By the BBMP's own admission, there are more than 5,000 potholes in the city. Ironically, while the agency claims that the issue will be addressed during peak monsoon season (June end to July), its officials blame incessant rains in the last one month for the slow work. They admitted that filling potholes in June-end and July would be very difficult for the same reason.
In fact, a senior official in the engineering department claimed that most potholes they had filled last month had reappeared following recent rains.
Meanwhile, city in-charge minister R. Ramalinga Reddy said that filling up of potholes is a continuous process as rains had created new potholes. He said there couldn't be an exact number of potholes or a cut-off date after which they will all be filled.
