Mumbai has reported more than 8,000 pothole complaints during the ongoing monsoon, even as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) continues its Rs 17,000-crore road concretisation programme across the city.
Between June 10 and the afternoon of August 20, the civic body received 8,032 complaints related to potholes across its 26 administrative wards. Of these, 7,829 complaints had been resolved, according to BMC data. In comparison, more than 8,600 pothole complaints had been registered by August 15 last year.
The eastern suburbs recorded the highest number of complaints. S ward in Bhandup topped the list with 471 complaints, followed by M/East, covering Govandi, Deonar and Mankhurd, with 461. At the other end, A ward, which includes Churchgate and Fort, recorded 61 complaints, while D ward covering Malabar Hill registered 62 and C ward reported 69.
Residents used multiple civic platforms to report road damage. More than 5,000 complaints were submitted through the My BMC Marg forum, over 1,500 via WhatsApp and more than 800 through X.
The complaints come as the BMC works to concretise more than 700 km of roads under its programme launched in 2022. The city has around 2,050 km of roads that were not concretised when the project began. Before work was halted for the monsoon, 475 km had been fully concretised and another 101.91 km had been partially completed.
The BMC maintains that road conditions have improved compared with previous years.
“While we have received pothole complaints, the number cannot be the only objective criteria as we have seen a massive improvement over the previous year. We have observed that the quantity of mastic to fix potholes is much lower than what had been used last year in the same period. This is an indication of the fact that the potholes are less severe,” a senior civic official said.
The BMC said 99 per cent of potholes are repaired using mastic and has deployed 65 mastic cookers across its 26 wards this year. Of these, 52 are owned by the civic body and 13 have been rented.
Officials also attributed several complaints to road depressions developing around utility trenches. “Wherever there has been recent trenching work and as the trench settles, we have observed higher pothole complaints in these locations,” an official said.
BMC Commissioner Ashwini Bhide said concretisation had helped bring down pothole numbers but acknowledged that bituminous roads continued to face the problem.
“The number of potholes has reduced owing to road concretisation this year. However, we definitely have some bituminous stretches where we have potholes. For that too, we have a mechanism through which once the potholes are identified by our people, it is identified by our teams and they work 24/7 to fix them,” Bhide told The Indian Express.
She added that potholes would continue to affect roads until the remaining stretches were concretised. “The potholes will, however, still keep the roads patchy. Once the roads are concretised, it will be taken care of,” she said.
Source: Indian Express
