BMC polls: The menace of potholes remains.

IBNLive.com:Wednesday,February 15, 2012.

Mumbai: Mumbai's crumbling infrastructure is best exemplified by the city's potholed roads. An RTI filed by CNN-IBN reveals how Rs 60 crore were spent last year alone. This is double the budgeted expense to smoothen the roads, and it's the taxpayers' money that has gone down many potholes. Despite allegations of irregularities and kickbacks not a single contractor has been blacklisted. Minimal fines are being imposed for shoddy work and year after year the same contractors are given multi-crore rupee contracts.

Large potholes had been dotting Mumbai's roads in the monsoons, increasing the commuting time, wrecking vehicles and sometimes even proving fatal.

The RTI filed by CNN-IBN finds that Rs 60 crore have literally gone down the potholes, double the budgeted Rs 30 crore in 2011.

In fact, in Borivali, Rs 7.5 crore were spent on road repairs, which is over three times the estimated Rs 2 crore. Rs 3.1 crore were spent on fixing roads in Lower Parel, even though the budget was less than one-third the amount and in Dadar the bill was Rs 2.5 crore against a provision of Rs 1.1 crore.

That amount does not account the extra Rs 68 crore spent maintaining the jetpatcher machines, bought by the BMC in 2008 at a price of over Rs 2.5 crore, marketed as the quick fix to Mumbai's pothole problem, but turned out to be white elephants.

Mumbaikar Dilip Moorkoth launched a Facebook campaign in 2011 against the annual menace and was disappointed by the BMC's response after his protest got media attention.

Moorkoth said, "Someone from the BMC called and said that they've been reading our articles and asked which stretch of road did I want them to fill up and I was surprised. I said this isn't about any particular stretch of road that I travel on and it's for all of us in Mumbai who go through the pain."

As corporation elections draw near, promises of pothole free roads are being made by every political party. It's an assurance Mumbaikars will find hard to accept, fearing they will be taken for a bumpy ride yet again.