The Times of India  30.09.2010

GURGAON: The Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon has already spent Rs 55 lakh to fill up the citys potholes. Now, it has a plan to spend another Rs 85 lakh to put bitumen on damaged portions.

The civic agency has identified over a dozen roads like IFFCO Chowk, Bata Chowk, Old and New Railway roads, Sector 5, Sheetla Mata Road, Khandsa Road and Basai Road for the bitumen work.

But commuters are not impressed. I have been skipping the Sadar Bazar Road (old city) for the past 5-6 months only because of the bad road condition, said Amit Kumar, a Palam Vihar resident. Some roads, Kumar said, were covered during the monsoon but things were was back to square one. Local civic agencies have done little to improve the road condition with honesty, alleged Rao Lal Singh, a local from the old city and Dinesh Gupta, a practicing lawyer.

MCG officials, however, justified the Rs 55 lakh expenditure. We have not yet released the total amount. We have made it clear to the contractors that they have to get in writing from locals that the task has been completed. The Rs 85 lakh expenditure is for black topping of the already-filled portions. If we had to complete both the pothole filling and bituminous work during monsoon, we would have to spend the same amount, said a senior engineer.

The engineer said that they are not undertaking any major job of relaying entire stretch of roads since they have only a few roads under their jurisdiction.

In fact, the bad road condition in the city was exposed on Tuesday when the route of Queens Baton Rally was changed at the last minute since the Basai Road had several potholes.