Although Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has achieved appreciation by winning various awards & recognition in different fields, including public transport in the past, however few areas like basic bus facility lately, bad road conditions; unabated increase in stray domestic animals on roads & encroachments on footpaths is constantly threatening common man for these basic facilities.
Taking these issues a delegation of Vidarbha Taxpayers Association (VTA) led by its president J. P. Sharma met Shyam Wardhane – Nagpur Municipal Commissioner and submitted memorandum seeking appropriate action at the earliest.
Sharma requested to the Commissioner that by spending crores of taxpayers’ money Star Buses have been acquired and to our knowledge hardly 50% of them are plying on roads, which clearly means that the common man is deprived of basic road transport and majority of those plying are also not repaired properly, with few buses missing with back wind-screens, brake lights, etc. Likewise appropriate parking arrangements should also be provided to the bus contractor, so that the buses parked on roads doesn’t create parking problems and many times possess accident risks.
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20 May 2025
Sharma further said like every year stray cows and buffalos on roads are causing threat to commuters and if NMC’s kanji house has space problem, all such stray cows can be sent to ‘Ujjwal Gowrakshan Trust’ situated on Umred Road they’ll take care of the animal. Similarly increase in encroachments on footpaths needs to be dealt with.
Tejinder Singh Renu, secretary of VTA appealed to the Commissioner that like all government contracts, even road must be having ‘Defect Liability’ period, which is a common feature of construction contracts wherein defects liability period is the period of time within which the contractor is contractually obliged to return to the construction site to repair defects which have appeared in the contractor’s works. Last year Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) raised defect liability period to 10 years for concrete roads and five years for asphalt roads, NMC should also act similarly and moreover on such roads name of contractor, address, contract amount, road length and defect liability period should be displayed by NMC on each such roads so that the common taxpayer is also aware of the factual situation and cost involved. As we are well aware that “Accountability breeds responsibility” and only till be fix accountability, we’ll never succeed in satisfactory performance.
Renu also requested NMC to raise demand from State Government and Maharashtra State Roads Development Corporation (MSRDC) as few roads are made by MSRDC and since then crores of rupees have been collected by MSRDC in form of tolls and are still generating revenue out; however these roads are maintained by NMC and no share is given by MSRDC to NMC.
Shyam Wardhane appreciated the idea of placing boards mentioning defect liability period on such roads, however said when NMC raised such period from one to two years, they faced lot of resistance from the contractors. On Star buses issue he admitted that there is fault on both the sides as NMC failed to reimburse the contractor Rs.54 Crore as committed in contract for various compensations and couldn’t provide requisite parking for buses. Moreover out of 500 plus buses only around 340 are on road and approximately 100 of them are under repair. People too target buses if there is any agitation, does causing maximum harm to them. On stray animal issue he admitted that available law is inadequate in handling this situation, apart from filing FIR nothing concrete is achieved. He said there should be no animals inside the city as Mumbai and Pune are totally free from such problem.
Others present in the delegation were Hemant Trivedi, Amarjeet Singh Chawla and Saqib Parekh.
