‘City’s 121 roads have potholes, in bad condition’

Staff Reporter :

Traffic Police survey exposes NMC’s tall claim

The general perception about bad condition about city roads has been endorsed by an official survey conducted by Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Chinmay Pandit, who found at least 121 roads with potholes or where roads are in bad condition. Most of these stretches have witnessed accidents and mishaps leading to public uproar against civic body and its contractors responsible for such shoddy work. In his affidavit filed before Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court, DCP Pandit stated that these roads in 10 traffic zones were surveyed by in-charge Senior Police Inspectors of the respective Traffic Zone and they detected these 121 problematic stretches.

So far, they had received 344 complaints from citizens about bad roads. These complaints are immediately forwarded to NMC for immediate redressal. The affidavit further claimed from November 13 to January 5, Traffic Police received 91 complaints and after forwarding the same to NMC, the traffic branch officials inspected the spots in order to ascertain whether the grievance was redressed or not. A division bench consisting of Justice Sunil Shukre and Justice Milind Jadhav, while hearing the PIL, asked NMC to file its reply on survey about road condition and complaints by citizens.

The City Police have been asked to explain why offence was not registered against contractor responsible for a bad road stretch near Gittikhadan where a woman two-wheeler rider died in mishap due to a big pothole. The High Court, while hearing a suo-motu PIL on pathetic road conditions due to which several citizens suffered injuries, had directed DCP to conduct such a survey to find out the ground reality and counter-check the tall claims made by NMC about road repairs. In fact, the High Court had slammed NMC for pathetic condition of city roads, potholes and dug-up roads and had observed, “Such bad roads are reported to be almost everywhere in the city of Nagpur.”

The court had expressed anguish that despite several past orders and promises made on affidavits, the situation had not improved much beyond the patch works here and there. The affidavit mentioned that stretches within Civil Lines were good for smooth vehicular traffic. About the roads passing under Railway lines on Kamptee Road near Uppalwadi, the affidavit stated that Railway under bridge (RuB) work was in progress and for two lanes traffic was diverted. Since there is no proper drainage line, NHAI has formulated proper drainage arrangement for all the four lanes and it will be in place by summer 2020. About the oft repeated inundation of Narendra Nagar RuB after slightest of rainfall, the DCP’s affidavit mentioned lack of proper drainage beneath this RuB due to which water accumulated.

The High Court has passed several orders in the past to fix the responsibility of erring contractors and officers of civic body for failure to maintain good roads and even file criminal cases against them. “We have noticed that inspite of such orders having been passed by this Court from time to time, there has not been much of the improvement”, the High Court had lamented. In its survey, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology noted that delay in repairing pothole ultimately led to escalation in road repair cost since more road portion got damaged also leading to acute inconvenience to road users.

NMC maintained that bad roads were one of the factors but most of the accidents took place due to traffic rule violations. Besides, in none of these cases, anybody had lodged complaint against the civic body or its officials. Quoting media reports, the High Court had stated that recent torrential rains had created havoc on the roads resulting in not only traffic jams but also accidents. The High Court has already made it clear that officials and contractors responsible for upkeep of city roads must be made accountable and citizens will not be allowed to suffer due to shocking indifference displayed by authorities citing absence of any penal provisions or criminal intentions on part of erring officers while in reality, millions of people are forced to suffer due to such shabby roads.

Amicus Curiae Rahil Mirza has repeatedly demanded that officers should be made responsible under Section 63 (18) of Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act. According to Section 63 (18) of Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act, the corporation is duty bound to make reasonable and adequate provision for construction, maintenance, alteration, and improvement of public streets, bridges, sub-ways, culverts, cause-ways. Adv Rahil Mirza (Amicus Curiae), Government Pleader Sumant Deopujari (State), Senior Counsel S K Mishra and Adv Sudhir Puranik (NMC), Adv M Anilkumar (intervenor) appeared in the matter.