Four months after its inauguration, a portion of the service road on Bengaluru's Kundalahalli underpass collapsed on Sunday, October 9. A video of the incident capturing the road collapse incident has gone viral on social media platforms. The visual shows a portion of the road caved in while vehicles passed around the damaged road.
As per reports, a sum of Rs 19.45 crore was spent on the construction of the Kundalahalli underpass by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). The BBMP, however, blamed water leakage to be the reason behind the road caving in. BBMP chief commissioner Tushar Giri Nath told the Times of India that the road caved in as a result of a leakage that the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) hadn't fixed. He further said that a water pipe burst early on Sunday which resulted in water supply disruptions in many areas.
Notably, the underpass at Bengaluru's Kundalahalli junction, which was inaugurated in June, is a key route to the IT hub. Authorities from the area visited the spot and repair work has been taken up. As a result, vehicular movement will be affected in the area. Meanwhile, one Twitter user pointed out that a huge sinkhole was formed on a road at Satellite Town the same day.
This comes at a time when the Congress has intensified its attack on the BJP while continuing its campaign against alleged irregularities and corruption by the Karnataka government. TNM had earlier accessed a Lokayukta report about one single constituency in Bengaluru which laid out how corruption plays out in road works, and how local government officials help them get away with substandard work — and in some cases, no work at all.