The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bengaluru's Municipal body, is infamous among the city's residents for its sheer incompetence. However, the BBMP somehow managed to sink to a new low on Thursday.
The BBMP had, on June 20, announced that they had spent an amount of Rs 23 crores to fix roads for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bengaluru trip.
Just three days later, the newly-renovated roads are already in tatters. Visuals from the newly-laid Jnanabharti main road show the newly-asphalted road peeling off like paint, requiring barely any effort.
This road was used by PM Modi to travel to Dr BR Ambedkar School of Economics (BASE) University on Monday. After a spell of overnight rain, the road caved in on Tuesday, just meters from the BASE University campus.
The situation proved embarrassing enough that Karnataka Chief Minister Basvaraj Bommai himself felt the need to weigh in. He ordered an immediate inquiry into the incident, following which the BBMP issued a show-cause notice to three engineers.
Shoddy roadwork and perenially potholed streets are not new phenomena in Bengaluru. The Karnataka High Court, too, has time and again pulled up the Karnataka government and the BBMP as well for the terrible roads.
Hearing an unrelated petition by some residents about civic work, the High Court wondered whether the President and Prime Minister should often visit the city and travel on different roads for civic agencies to do their job, in a not-so-veiled reference to reports about the money spent on roads ahead of PM Narendra Modi's visit.
