MUMBAI: The civic body has given a three-day deadline to engineers of
the roads departments to inspect the major Ganpati routes in their
jurisdiction and report all potholes
that need to be attended to. They have been asked to report the
potholes on the civic body’s website following which the contractors
will fill potholes in their jurisdiction. But if they fail to fill the
potholes in 48 hours, the contractors will be fined.

“The idea
is to start filling up the potholes early so that even if it rains, we
will be able to re-do a few areas well in time before Ganeshotsav,” said
a civic official.Civic officials say that in case the
engineers fail to detect potholes and upload them on the website,
penalty will be imposed on them as well.

This year, the civic
body has decided to fill potholes on the Ganpati routes through the
roads department. Last year, these were filled by the ward level staff.
With quality being a prime concern, this change has been made, said a
senior civic official.

The Ganpati mandals have expressed
concern over the state of roads in meetings with the civic
administration. The Ganesh festival begins on September 19.

Ganapati mandals have been conducting inspections of the roads and
spotted around 2,400 potholes so far. The mandals have inspected roads
leading to Girgaum chowpatty, Ambedkar Road, Ramabai Nagar road, the
road leading to Juhu Beach, roads near Borivli and Kandivli station,
roads in Oshiwara and Chembur.

“The BMC
had started to attend to the potholes, but the potholes have resurfaced
again due to the heavy rains in the city since a couple of days,” said
Naresh Dahibhavkar, co-ordination committee for Ganpati.

Another
area of concern was also the uneven patches on the roads, which the BMC
might not attend to for which all the mandals have been asked to use
gunny bags and metal sheets so that there is no damage to the idols.