Cornered by court over potholes, BMC makes all road engineers culpable

In what appeared to be a perfect example of washing one's hands of the responsibility, the BMC yesterday informed the Bombay High Court that it will be soon be making phone numbers of all road engineers from the 24 wards public so that pothole-related complaints can be addressed to them directly.

"Since a road engineer is responsible for repairing potholes in every ward, their numbers will be made public, following which citizens can register complaints by sending a picture of a pothole via WhatsApp. Upon receiving a complaint, an engineer will have to respond with another photo of the repaired pothole within 48 hours," said Anil Sakhare, senior counsel representing the BMC.

Fixing responsiblity: Potholes will have to be attended to within two days of complaints. File pic

Previous rap
At the previous hearing, the court had censured BMC for being unable to sustain its mobile app - MCGM 24X7 - through which people can register complaints on bad roads. The civic body had then told the court that the app wasn't performing up to the mark as the servers kept crashing due to excessive usage.

However, the civic body yesterday told the bench of Justices Shantanu Kemkar and Makarand Karnik that it had taken suggestions from a committee comprising members from the Indian Road Congress and the Central Road Research Institute for making better roads, as directed by the bench earlier.

It also informed the bench that the committee suggested using Instapatch and Patchmaster technologies for fixing bad roads, and that the civic body has appointed five contractors temporarily to execute the job. "The committee will check the quality of work. And if these contractors do a good job, they will be hired for future works as well," Sakhare told the bench.