Agencies not willing to handover roads to BMC: Civic official

Agencies responsible for the construction, repair and maintenance ofparts of city roads, such as Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), Public Works Department (PWD), Western Railway, Army and Western Naval Command and RCF, are resisting handover of their roads to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and want to keep maintaining the roads as per their individual standards, senior civic officials told dna.

Fed up of being held responsible for poor road conditions, with pothole issues in particular, on roads which do not come under the jurisdiction of the BMC, the civic body has recently sent a proposal to the state government, seeking its intervention to ensure that all agencies involved for making and maintaining city roads, follow a uniform
policy for construction, maintenance and repair of roads.

The proposal has also suggested that that public roads maintained by agencies such as the be brought under the jurisdiction of a single agency, in this case, the BMC.

However, it mentions that only roads of MIDC, Andheri and parts of MbPT has so far been handed over to the BMC and other agencies are reluctant to hand over their roads.

"Members of all the organisations said they are already maintaining the roads as per their existing specifications," a senior civic official said.

Civic officials informed that all agencies have been given the login IDs and passwords to access the Pothole Tracking System on www.voiceofcitizen.com, BMC's online software for detecting potholes and attending them within 48 hours. "While the BMC routinely transfers potholes and bad patches noticed on roads under the jurisdiction of
other agencies through the tracking system, the agencies have not taken serious cognisance of the system, as a result of which a number of potholes keep piling up," the proposal stated.

Civic officials of the road department are assuming that sharing of revenues arising out of advertising rights on these roads, is probably the reason these agencies are reluctant of handing over their roads to the BMC. 

"So, in the proposal, the BMC has recommended that a formula on the sharing of revenues through advertising based on NVP of the work done as on the date of transfer or the revenue can be divided equally between the BMC and the agency concerned for the next 10 years, after which the full revenue will go to the BMC,' the official said.

Dilip Kawathkar, joint project director of MMRDA, refuted the civic  officials' claims and said, "We are willing to handover our roads, bridges and flyovers to the BMC. It is a good initiative.

Principal secretary of PWD department Shyamal Mukherjee said, "It is the decision of the government. In case, the highways are transferred to the BMC, the persons employed for their upkeep will have to be placed somewhere."

 
Additional municipal commissioner SVR Srinivas said that the MMRDA has already transferred many of its roads to the BMC, but declined to comment about the rest.

Mumbai has approximately 2,000 km of public roads, of which over 1,941 km are maintained by BMC. Rest of them have been maintained by other agencies.

What does the proposal state?

1. The proposal has suggested the government to direct all the agencies to follow the guidelines recommended by the Standing Technical Advisory Committee (STAC), appointed by the BMC that deals with the design, repair and maintenance of roads as well as quality control and quality assurance during and after construction of roads.

2. The proposal has also recommended taking over of bridges and flyovers from agencies maintaining them.

3. It suggested that roads inside private layouts should be taken over by the BMC and will be allowed to be used by the public so that there is an uniform distribution of traffic.