As the city limped back towards normalcy after suffering vast damages from the downpour over the last few days, a portion of the busy road near Sankey Tank caved in on Wednesday, resulting in a sinkhole a few feet wide, causing traffic to pile up, until the hole was closed by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
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Officials from the civic body said the heavy rain caused the sinkhole. “There were no other issues. We have immediately filled the hole so that there will be no traffic snarls on the stretch,” officials added on Thursday.
“With excessive rain, water carries soil particles to the lowest level, causing a cavity below the road surface. Now the sinkhole is filled with sand, boulders, wet mix macadam,” an official explained.
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No untoward incidents were reported due to the sinkhole, said BBMP officials.
This comes after a similar cave-in was reported on one of the roads after many roads got a facelift for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the city in June this year. The sinkhole appeared in a road ahead of Nagarabhavi Circle near the Dr. B. R. Ambedkar School of Economics University, Bengaluru, campus that Mr. Modi inaugurated.
BBMP had blamed it on water leakage from a Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) pipeline that had loosened the soil, causing a sinkhole.
BBMP officials said sinkholes usually appear after rain or leakage in water or sewage below the road. In a rare case, a sinkhole had appeared in 2021 on Tannery Road near a building during metro tunnelling work just 100 metres away from the alignment of the underground tunnel of Namma Metro.