80-ft Road: good, bad or ugly?

80-ft Road: good, bad or ugly?
The Times of India

Bangalore: One road. Three inspections in less than a week. Three versions.

Result: Road works hang fire, engineers on the job don’t know where to look.

On Wednesday, provoked by the hue and cry over spending Rs 24 crore on 11 roads, CM H D Kumaraswamy landed at the 80 feet Road, Indiranagar, for a reality check along with mayor Mumtaz Begum, BMP commissioner Jothiramalingam and other officials. It was then mayor Begum’s turn to take centre-stage and explain to the CM: “This surface is already good. Please check the previous history of this road, it did not suffer even during last year’s heavy rains. Instead, why don’t we have Old Madras Road which is battered, in this list of 11 roads?’’

And Old Madras Road was promptly included. Kumaraswamy said: “We are committed to providing good quality roads. I have no complaint with the quality of roads here, the treatment plan for pavements also look good. The work should be finished entirely by June. However, other roads requiring immediate work should be taken up.’’ Followed BMP commissioner Jothiramalingam’s prompt reply: “We will be taking them up, there was a delay in tenders.’’

A bone of contention was whether a superior quality treatment like bituminous-macadam should be taken up on all the remaining roads in the IT-BT corridor. As for MG Road and Airport Road, the CM was informed that higher specifications would not be adopted because the roads had withstood the test of time and heavy rains. Kumaraswamy then visited 80 feet Road, Koramangala, which had been in an appalling condition and where now work has started in earnest, and expressed satisfaction with the quality of work proposed to be implemented in the area.

For a backgrounder, as an off-shoot of the ‘infrastructure crisis’ last year when many IT firms threatened to boycott the city’s flagship event IT.in because of poor infrastructure, a consensus was reached between the government and the industry representatives. Nineteen roads were selected as needing an immediate facelift and work on these roads was supposed to have been taken up on a fast-track basis. What is irking the corporators is that while roads battered in last year’s deluge are still lying in limbo, crores of money has been pumped into these select roads.

Special purpose vehicle: Industry representative R K Misra, also member of the empowered committee on infrastructure, is peeved that work would go downhill if the mayor ‘interferes’ in development work. “The work on these roads is of excellent quality. These roads were approved by the ex-CM and ratified by the BMP council.’’

He seconds the ‘special purpose vehicle’ (SPV) proposed by the commissioner which will apparently ensure that infrastructure work would be taken out of the purview of BMP council and its corporators. The SPV needs to be announced by the state government.

CM’s night vigil

“I will personally go on night inspections to check the kind of road works that have been going on and their progress. Soon I will visit Puttenahalli and J P Nagar — there are so many complaints of bad roads and encroached drains in these areas’’ declared CM Kumaraswamy.

THUS SPAKE...

BMP ENGINEERS
We don’t know what to do, should we continue work on roads or stall it?

MAYOR MUMTAZ BEGUM
Who is this R K Misra? I am the elected representative. Why should we spend on good roads?


COMMISSIONER K JOTHIRAMALINGAM
I am satisfied with the works. I am only acting based on the recommendations of our engineers.


EMPOWERED PANEL ON INFRASTRUCTURE, R K MISRA
BMP does not have the technical competence to tackle infrastructure, they should get out of the business for at least five years. They are against these 11 roads as the contractors and corporators have not got their share.