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With Rs2,000 fine for hole on road, mandals start digging up footpaths in Mumbai

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Devotees carry a Ganpati idol in Parel. The festival starts on August 29
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City's Ganpati mandals have become smarter, but not in a good way. With the civic body levying heavy penalty on digging holes in roads to erect pandals and poles for displaying decorative lights and ad banners, this year on, mandals have started digging up footpaths.

In Matunga, Dadar, Wadala, Lalbaug and Parel, where the most number of Ganpati pandals are erected, maximum damage to footpaths can already be seen. "Usually, mandals at least take permission to set up pandals and canopies. But they never reveal the correct number of poles they are going to erect," said a civic official.

Last week, Naresh Dahibawkar, president of the association of Ganpati mandals, had submitted a list of 3,000 potholes across the city, caused due to digging up of roads, and asked the civic road department to address them.

"What mandal officials don't take into consideration is that by doing this they are damaging resurfaced roads. This year on, we are going to be stricter," said a senior civic official.

Residents and civic activists in the affected areas are up in arms against the mandals as well as the civic body. "Despite no one giving permission, mandals start digging, erecting pandals. Then, BMC says it will take action. However, ultimately, nothing happens. This is how authorities are tackling illegal hawkers and slums too... slowly and steadily everything is legalised..." said a resident of Lakhamsi Nappo Road, where more than 50 bamboo poles have been erected by digging up footpaths.

Both sides of Tilak Road too have been dug up for erecting poles. The stretch between Dadar TT and Hanuman Mandir has been damaged in a similar manner. "These poles are erected in the name of putting up decorative lights. But they are actually for displaying ads. Mandals earn a lot from the ads, and they don't care about pedestrians or the damage done to roads and footpaths, for which crores of rupees are spent from taxpayers' pockets," said activist Nikhil Desai, adding that BMC is clearly turning a blind eye to all this, and that big mandals pull their might and snub junior-level officers.

"It is unnecessary and unjustified to give these mandals permission to erect pandals in the first place. Nobody pays fine later. We are not against festival, but no one is benefitting from its commercialisation," said Desai.

The BMC penalises mandals Rs2,000 per hole and charges them around Rs4.5 lakh for erecting canopies on roads.

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