Following mid-day’s reports, additional municipal commissioner makes surprise visits to check quality of concreting work in city. During the discussion, Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray sought an Economic Offence Wing (EOW) inquiry into road work awarded by the BMC
Rahul Narwekar. File pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has been instructed to explore whether roads less than 15 metres in width can be made of mastic asphalt instead of cement concrete (CC). A meeting of all members of the Legislative Assembly from Mumbai was called on Monday to hear their concerns about the quality of the ongoing concreting work in Mumbai.
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Asseembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar also asked BMC to ensure all ongoing concreting is completed before May 31 to ensure citizens aren’t inconvenienced during the monsoon season.
The meeting chaired by Narwekar on Monday was attended by Urban Development (UD) Minister Eknath Shinde and MLAs from Shiv Sena (Shinde), BJP, Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) as well as BMC officials, including civic chief Bhushan Gagrani.
According to those who attended, of Mumbai’s 36 MLAs, around 22 were present at the meeting, in which discussions on improving coordination between utility agencies—which has been lacking, resulting in delays in various projects—was discussed.
BJP MLAs Ameet Satam and Yogesh Sagar complained about delays and the inferior quality of roads. To properly assess the situation on the ground, it was decided that additional municipal commissioners of the respective areas conduct visits in collaboration with the MLA concerned. “This will help assess the on-site progress of the CC road work and address concerns,” said Satam.
Suburban Guardian Minister and BJP leader Ashish Shelar suggested taking the help of Pune-based military engineering to address the concerns.
“It has also been decided that another meeting should be held in a month, to review the progress on the issues that were raised in today’s [Monday’s] meeting. Reports on the feasibility of asphalt mastic roads are expected,” said an MLA on condition of anonymity.
During the discussion, Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray sought an Economic Offence Wing (EOW) inquiry into road work awarded by the BMC. “Road works were given to benefit contractors of a particular party [a veiled reference to the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena]. An EOW inquiry should be ordered into road tenders and the quality of work,” Thackeray Jr demanded.
Meanwhile, Satam demanded that instead of concreting all roads, the administration should consider mastic asphalt roads ones measuring 15 metres or less in width. Concluding the meeting, Narwekar said, “The BMC should explore whether smaller roads can be made with mastic asphalt.”
Why MLAs met on Monday
Last week, during the question hour session in the Assembly, ruling and Opposition party MLAs raised serious concerns over quality and delays in CC road work with Satam mentioning that despite spending R21,000 crore between 1999 and 2022, road quality still remains a cause of concern for citizens.
BJP MLA Atul Bhatkalkar, Yogesh Sagar and Congress MLA Amin Patel demanded concrete solutions to the issue and asked for a separate meeting with BMC officials and ministers concerned to address the issue on priority.
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