It wouldn't be wrong to say that Bengalureans have seen more potholes on the road that the road itself and now the BBMP has vowed to fix all of them in just 10 days.
At last count, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had estimated the number of potholes in the city at 5,067 on a 957km stretch of road. Now, the BBMP has claimed that it will fix all the potholes in the city in a matter of 10 days.
In an interview to The New Indian Express, BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said that he has set a deadline of ten days for the BBMP officers to finish fixing the potholes.
According to him, BBMP officers have been working from 10pm to 3am every night to fix the potholes.
"Once a particular road is repaired, officers on the field have to send photographs from their GPS-enabled mobile phones to the Commissioner," Manjunath said.
The BBMP had initiated an exercise to fix the potholes on the roads some time in August. By the evening of August 23, the BBMP had already filled 3738, says a report published by The Times of India.
Fixing the total number of potholes at 5,067, BS Prahallad, chief engineer (road infrastructure), BBMP had then told the newspaper:
"The highest number of potholes (2,045) was found in the East zone; we have filled 1,817 of them."
The problem of potholes has been plaguing Bengaluru for years, especially during the rains.
While the BBMP has come under fire for its lackadaisical approach, citizens have often stepped forward to highlight the issue in interesting ways. In 2015, a city-based artist had put up the installation of an anaconda, with a hand projecting out of its mouth, to bring the issue of waterlogged potholes into the limelight.