BENGALURU: The roads in Bengaluru have got a drastic makeover ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the city on Friday. The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been working overtime over the last few days filling potholes, cleaning and asphalting all the roads that the PM will take, including the Old Airport Road.
The BBMP employees and contract workers are engaged in fixing roads and footpaths and medians, planting varieties of flower-bearing plants on both sides of the road, decorating main streets with colourful lights, painting traffic signal poles and kerb stones and beautifying the entire city. Small sheds on the roadside and street vendors have already been removed by the civic body.
This is not the first time that the civic authorities have woken up during visits by VIPs or Union Ministers to the city.
The BBMP had spent over Rs 14 crore on fixing 14 km of road in the city, including repair work on M G Road like painting the road divider, during Modi’s last visit on International Yoga Day. It also spent another Rs 10 crore on other development works. Just two days after the PM’s visit the roads had started to crumble and had come in for a lot of flak for the sub-standard quality of work. The Prime Minister’s Office had even sought a report on the mess.
The Prime Minister will arrive at HAL Airport and proceed to the Legislators’ Home where he will garland a statue of poet Kanakadasa. Following this, he will proceed to the Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna Bangalore City Railway Station where he will flag off South India’s first Vande Bharat Express that will run between Chennai, Bengaluru and Mysuru. He will then proceed to Kempegowda International Airport where he will unveil Terminal-2 of KIA and the Kempegwda statue on the airport premises. He will also inaugurate a theme park and address a public rally.
VIP routes spic and span
The BBMP has made sure that all road which the Prime Minister will be taking are getting a complete facelift with the roads being repaired, a free of potholes, painted and maintained well. On the other hand, roads in other parts of the city continue to be in a bad shape.
The road medians too have got a fresh coat of paint.Recently, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had warned the BBMP and set a deadline for filling potholes, but the civic body had failed to meet the target. Despite many lives being lost due to pathetic roads, the BBMP has brazened it out all along.
Even after the fresh round of road work, netizens have already started pointing to BBMP’s sub-standard work. and are taunting the Palike that the roads will go back to their previous state after Modi’s visit.