Nagpur: The first rains of monsoon season exposed the “ugly face” of Nagpur Municipal Corporation Administration. The “ugly face” was reflected in the pathetic condition of almost all tar roads. The poor roads infuriated citizens, and they in turn, bombarded the City Fathers belonging to ruling and opposition parties alike. The issue also generated heat in the General Body Meeting of NMC which witnessed charges and counter-charges flying from ruling and opposition benches. The ultimate outcome was formation of an all-party fact-finding committee.
The fact-finding committee, headed by senior Corporator Sunil Agrawal, inspected a few roads on day one of its probe on Thursday (August 4) and shockingly, gave a clean chit to contractors and the concerned babus. The probe committee did not find any major potholes or pathetic condition on any of the roads in a zone. Later, the NMC Administration informed that a proposal would be put before the Municipal Commissioner when he returns back from leave. The proposal says that in future, the concerned agencies/departments carrying out road construction should own their responsibility by displaying boards at roads constructed by them having details of names of contractors, officials who supervised the construction etc. Funding should also be in the hands of one authority only.
The NMC Administration further informed that the parental responsibility of constructed roads would rest with it irrespective of whether potholes or poor condition of roads is detected in further inspections.
Ironically, when the probe committee inspected the roads, only three members were present including head of the panel. Sunil Agrawal, Rajesh Ghodpage and Mahendra Borkar hit the streets while Kishore Kumeria, Seema Raut and Abhishek Shambharkar were conspicuous by their absence.
The probe committee visited three major roads and 3 internal roads of Laxmi Nagar zone on Thursday. They only inspected roads under defect liability period (DLP). Agrawal directed to collect sample of one major and one interior road. The team found only 2 or 3 potholes on the road and that too developed due to local reasons only and not due to bad construction work.
