The condition of suburban Mumbai's Link Road, adjacent to Infinity Mall, becomes gruesome every year during the monsoon season. The bowl-shaped potholes resembling the shape of craters have emerged to become death traps for pedestrians and motorists.
The Link road is just beneath the stretch where construction works are underway for the proposed metro line 2A (Yellow Line) meant to connect Andheri West with Dahisar East. Locals claim the road below the metro bridge comes under the jurisdiction of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) officials and the construction responsibility for the same is with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC). However, the MMRDA officials denied the allegation that the road comes under their jurisdiction.
Andheri based citizen's group Lokhandwala Oshiwara Citizen's Association (LOCA) had raised the issue with the local K (West) ward officials demanding immediate attention to the situation.
"The condition of the roads have been worsening by the day. This road is being used by most of the people living in Andheri and its adjoining areas, thus there's a lot of risk involved while commuting," stated Karan Jotwani, a founding member of the LOCA group.
The members of LOCA approached the K (West) ward officials and got them to push the other agencies, seeking immediate repairs.
"Instead of us contacting MMRDA, we made BMC do that, because that would be more effective. There are multiple agencies involved in this case and getting the job done in this situation is quite time consuming," stated Jotwani.
"The roads also don't have the street lights installed, so at night, it becomes even more risky. Hence we wanted to get this resolved at the earliest," stated Dhaval Shah, co-founder of LOCA.
Repairing works for the potholes was initiated by DMRC earlier this week and the first phase was completed on August 19.
The civic ward officials had stated that as metro works are underway, it's the responsibility of the MMRDA to conduct the repairing works. However, the BMC takes up repairing works, withstanding if there's a delay.
"The road where the potholes have emerged is presently under MMRDA's jurisdiction as repair works are underway. The repair works of the potholes have been done by MMRDA, however a significant portion of work is still left," said a BMC engineer of the roads department.
"When the issue was addressed to the BMC, we pushed the MMRDA and they had assured the remaining works will be done soon," the official added.
FPJ also contacted BMC assistant commissioner, Vishvas Mote, however, he was unavailable for a on-record comment. He also sent a text message to FPJ asking about the query, however, he didn't reply back.
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