A day after the death of a student due to a pothole at Hyderabad's Kukatpally Y-junction, the Hyderabad Metro Rail and GHMC pointed fingers at each other over responsibility to fix the road.
Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Subash Singh, head of GHMC’s road maintenance department, said, “We repaired the small potholes on that road as people were facing a lot of problems. But we can’t repair the big potholes as the road does not fall under our jurisdiction. It is the work of HMR and they must do it.”
On Friday, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) stated the road had been handed over to HMR when Metro Rail work commenced, and therefore, it was their duty to repair the road, the DC report adds.
Following this, the HMR has called for tenders to repair the road.
A 25-year-old student, Bora Arun Kumar, died on the spot after he fell from the bike when his cousin applied the brakes at the Kukatpally Y-junction to avoid hitting a scooter. The scooter ahead had reportedly slowed down to avoid a crater on the road.
Arun was on his way to his training classes in SR Nagar with his cousin K Somashekar, a software engineer, when the accident took place.
It was reported that a scooter ahead of them slowed down to avoid a bad section of the road and to avoid hitting the scooter, Somashekar applied brakes. "Arun who was riding pillion, fell at a distance and died on the spot,” Kukatpally sub-inspector K Naidu said.
Meanwhile, traders at Sultan Bazaar have threatened to go on dharna claiming that bad roads along the metro rail corridor II the stretch running from Kacheguda to Pultibowli was directly affecting their business.
The Times of India reported:
Incidentally , the festive season is usually the busiest month in the year in terms of business. Previously , traders here had submitted a representation to metro rail authorities appealing to them to delay the shifting process and subsequent dismantling of their shops till post Diwali, which the metro authorities had agreed to. Nevertheless, their request for immediate repair of roads has not been taken up yet.
Another TOI report added that a GHMC commissioner B Janardhan Reddy on Saturday suspended a deputy chief engineer, for uploading information about repair work on city roads on GHMC website without verification.
According to the report, the deputy chief engineer stated on the website, that roads were repaired despite the road work not being complete at the location.