BENGALURU: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has yet again failed to meet its deadline for filling up potholes in the city. This is the ninth time that the civic body has failed to meet its own deadline. It had earlier promised to fill all potholes in the city by Saturday afternoon.
Earlier, the BBMP had set a deadline till November 10, but BBMP administrator Rakesh Singh had directed the engineers to fill up potholes by Saturday afternoon. However, Chief Engineer Prahlad claimed that they were unable to take up the pothole filling work due to rain over the last four days in several parts of the city.
The BBMP had provided all the necessary facilities to complete the work in a 1,400 km stretch. Separate contractors have been appointed for executing the work in all the eight zones.
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had earlier taken the BBMP officials to task for not completing the pothole-filling work. Citizens too had expressed outrage over Palike for not completing the work.
The BBMP is now pulling all stops to fill the remaining 7,254 potholes of the of 31,211 potholes on main roads of the city across the eight zones.
Road infrastructure experts point out that potholes cannot be closed when it rains. Crusher stones and bitumen mix, which are is used to lay roads and fill potholes should have a temperature of 100-110 degrees and will have to be heated again if it gets wet.