Mumbai: Youth Congress Launches Campaign Painting Potholes As ‘BMC Vikas’

With the arrival of monsoons, Mumbaikars are again battling the infamous potholes on the roads of Mumbai. Alleging inefficiency of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to provide pothole-free roads, the Mumbai Youth Congress has initiated a campaign forcing the municipal corporation to fill the potholes on an immediate basis. Young Congress members are marking potholes across the city and writing ‘BMC Vikas’ to highlight the alleged inefficiency of the corporation.

The youth wing of Indian National Congress has come up with a new technique to keep the BMC on their feet to fill up the potholes at warp speed. The young Congress members’ new protest includes marking of potholes at various locations across the city and attribute as the development done by the BMC by writing ‘BMC Vikas’. The protestors are also raising allegations against the government for failing to meet the promises made by them to make Mumbai pothole free.

The initiative, started by Sufiyan Haider, working president of Mumbai Youth Congress, has been kickstarted from different areas of Andheri. Haider along with members of the party took on the streets with a can of white paint and marked potholes at Dindoshi, Veera Desai Road and other localities of Andheri (W). The initiative will be spread across Mumbai within a week where members of Youth Congress will also join the initiative to mark potholes across the city.

“Mumbai has a budget of over Rs. 4500 crores just for development and repairing of roads. Even after such a huge budget, we are met with potholes in every monsoon. For the last two and a half years, we do not have elected corporators to represent us in the BMC and it is being directly ruled by the BJP and Shinde Sena. The BMC is not listening to us and therefore we have to get on the streets as the last resort,” said Haider.

After the start of campaign in Andheri, BMC has already started filling up the potholes marked by the Youth Congress. Congress’ Varsha Gaikwad, member of parliament from the Mumbai North Central constituency also appreciated the young party members for their campaign and claimed it to be much needed.

“Mumbai has really become crater city these days and like every year BMC is making tall claims but doing little. This campaign shows the problems people are facing because of BMC's shoddy work despite a huge budget for road repairs,” Gaikwad said.