Mumbai: Repairs yet to begin on 150 of the city's roads

The city's corporators, fearing bumpy rides this monsoon, are very keen that the city's roads are repaired before that. But, the city is not likely to have any luck this monsoon either as the civic body is yet to issue work orders for more than 50 per cent of the roads that need repair. Corporators claimed that 232 roads were approved for repair by the committee before the model code of conduct kicked in, but work orders for 150 have not been issued yet.

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On the remaining 70 roads for which orders have been issued, work has not begun, they added. Corporators said that once work orders are issued, the onus of road maintenance lies on the contractors during the monsoon period, which would result in higher costs. The civic body was thus trying to save that additional costs, they alleged. However, rubbishing such allegations, the civic administration has blamed the delay in work on the code of conduct.

Bandra's Perry Road and St Andrew's Road which have been listed as needing urgent repairs. Pics/Bipin Kokate

Before the code of conduct kicked in, the civic body got several projects worth over Rs 2,500 crore approved by the committee members but hardly any work has commenced ever since. The civic body should have taken blanket permission from the Election Commission to begin work as the monsoon will set in soon, corporators said.

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"Orders have issued only for 75 roads which the BMC officials felt were important," said Ravi Raja, opposition group leader adding, "The citizens will yet again suffer with bad roads because of the lethargic approach of the civic officials."

St Andrew's Road in Bandra.

Abhijeet Samant, BJP corporator, also said that the BMC should have sought the EC's permission instead of giving excuses. "The administration is hand in glove with the contractors and thus doesn't want to issue work orders as the responsibility of such roads will then lie on contractors and they will have to suffer loses," he alleged.

'Work will be done soon'
A civic official, however, denied the allegations, saying that work has begun on roads that were on priority. "Work on the others was not urgent but will definitely be repaired eventually. Work on them will start immediately after monsoon as we will be issuing work orders now that the code of conduct is relaxed."

"We have already sent a formal reply to the corporators on the status of the contracts that were approved by the standing committee. The roads department is working on completing pre-monsoon work on priority and it will be done soon," said S Nadgauda, in charge of the department.

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