A sinkhole suddenly appeared on the road at the busy Madhya Kailash junction in Chennai on Thursday morning. While traffic police officials barricaded the spot, vehicular movement is slow as a result of the crater.
According to reports, the sinkhole, which is around six-feet deep, appeared at the tri-junction of Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) and Sardar Patel Road in the early hours of Thursday. The crater is at the Madhya Kailash signal, where vehicles from Gandhi Mandapam road take a right to access OMR.
Officials say it is unclear why the road caved in. However, some reports say that the road caved-in due to the impact of the underground drainage works that were being carried out close to the sinkhole. Visuals from the spot also shows that a leak in the drainage pipe beneath the sinkhole.
#TrafficAlert: Traffic flow slow on Sardar Patel Road both direction as the road has caved in at CPT Jn. Traffic men attending.
— ChennaiTrafficAlert (@CCTPolice_Alert) June 13, 2019
Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), which is carrying out infrastructure works on OMR for its second phase, has denied it being the reason for the road caving in.
Speaking to TNM, the PRO of Greater Chennai Corporation said that it was common for the road to cave-in at Madhya Kailash junction.
“It has happened in the past because of Metro rail work. We have to see why it caved in this time,” the PRO said adding that the Corporation would have sent staff to attend to it. In November 2015, the road had caved in at the Madhya Kailash signal owing to the heavy rains and floods in Chennai.
Road cave-ins have taken place in other parts of the city as well.
In January 2018, a 10-foot crater appeared on Anna Salai, Chennai’s arterial road. The road caved-in near the DMS junction, where the construction for CMRL was going on. The Managing Director of CMRL had then said that the cause for the mishap could be ascertained only after examination of the spot.
In 2017, an MTC bus and a car were trapped inside a crater which appeared suddenly on Anna Salai. The incident happened near the Church Park school and the bus was stationary when the road caved-in. The CMRL had reacted to the incident and said that the cave-in might have happened due to the loose soil in the region. Following this, the CMRL had temporarily suspended the tunneling work between Thousand Lights and AG-DMS stations.