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.