Citizens stumped in contest, officials in seventh heaven!

Citizens stumped in contest, officials in seventh heaven!
Deccan Herald

More roads will be brought under the purview of the ‘spot-a-pothole’ contest. And that is the emboldened BMP official speaking.

For months on end, Bangaloreans battered them, charging them with inefficiency, incompetence, lack of commitment and more. Four days ago, they dared the citizens to spot potholes on a select 142 roads where they claim to have completed the task. Wednesday — the fourth day of the contest — too passed with the citizens failing to nab them and the BMP engineers and officials are now rolling up their sleeves for more fun and more work.

“We will add some more roads to the list of roads eligible for the contest. The additions will be made in the next 15 days,” BMP Engineer-in-chief Rame Gowda said.

What’s more, this time round, the BMP will not depend on the media reports or citizens protests to give publicity to Bangalore’s roads. They will do it on their own and spend on it too. “Advertisements giving publicity to the contest will be issued soon,” said another top officer of BMP.

Valuable info

The officer noted that all the complaints received till date were from areas outside the purview of the listed roads and these were ‘valuable information’. It has made easy the task of identifying areas requiring action on priority, he said.

By the way, do you know that the 20 x 20 cms surface measure and 5 cms depth — the minimum size the BMP has specified for the spot-a-pothole contest — is reportedly smaller than what is technically the minimum size for a pothole?

According to Mr Rame Gowda, the minimum size is technically 9 x 9 inches surface measure and 2 inches depth, and that works to about a few centimetres larger than the size prescribed for the contest. There now, four long days and Bangaloreans could not even identify something even smaller than a ‘technically correct’ pothole on their roads eh?

The total complaints registered in the BMP’s zonal offices as on Wednesday were as follows: 150 in South zone, 31 in West zone and 16 in East zone.

BMP engineers and officers led by Commissioner K Jothiramalingam have already deposited a sum of around Rs 1.3 lakh as prize money for the Rs 100-a-pothole contest.

Officers are however not ready to buy the bait on when their celebrations will begin if the citizens continue to fail in their contest. “We anyway have awards in the category ‘best maintained roads’. These are given annually on Kempegowda Day celebrations,” was the guarded response from one of them.

The prize therefore is still up for grabs. But spot those potholes first!