BMC spent...

As per official records, it allocated Rs 13,000 crore for road repairs and reconstruction from April 2012 to March 2018.

Pankaj Joshi, executive director of Urban Design Research Institute, said, “It is understandable that excessive vehicular traffic load and trenching are reasons behind bad patches, then why not construct roads that are suitable for these extreme conditions? Also, the civic body should study notorious stretches which have bad patches every year in order to know the exact cause. It can be a bad drainage system, poor trenching work, heavy traffic and so on. There has to be analysis to control expenditure.”

Spending almost Rs 9,000 crore in six years is an exorbitant amount especially when compared to the amount of money is spent by civic authorities in Delhi to maintain a far bigger road network.

From April 2016 to March 2018, three municipal corporations – North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporations – spent Rs 528.68 crore to maintain 28,000 kilometres of roads that are less than 60 feet in width. Delhi’s Public Works Department (PWD) spent Rs 3,739 crore between April 2015 and March 2018 on arterial roads (wider than 60 feet) and bridges. In other words, these agencies in Delhi spent less money on more roads, and yet the national capital’s roads are, on an average, in far better condition than those in Mumbai.

Closer home is the example of the Mumbai-pune expressway, which was constructed at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore in the late 1990s. “Even though it was built almost two decades ago, the concrete stretch is still in good shape and even well maintained. In the past six years, the BMC has spent nine times the cost of expressway and we still don’t have better roads,” said Agarwal.

The state of Mumbai’s roads has been a repeated cause of embarrassment for the BMC. In 2012, then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan announced top infrastructure companies would be roped in to construct roads in Mumbai. However, the plan never saw the light of day. Joshi explained the lack of success on this matter: “There are a lot of challenges for big infrastructure companies to construct roads in Mumbai. Considering heavy traffic which poses as a major hurdle, big infra companies may not be interested in such projects.”

In 2015, a road repair scam was uncovered and the subsequent probe indicted 180 engineers, six of whom were dismissed. Losses of more than Rs 1,000 crore were detected and a nexus was revealed between BMC officials and contractors, along with inferior quality material being used as well as discrepancies between what was on paper and what was on the roads.

Municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta insists that after the scam, there are more checks and balances in place to prevent the repetition of the conditions that enabled the road repair scam. The BMC has overhauled the way the work contracts are issued, he said, and there is more alertness to the state of the roads.

“The most important thing we are looking at, for a long term solution, is analysis of notorious stretches that have bad patches every year. So, parallel to road repair works, there is an analysis being done on identified notorious stretches to determine the actual reason behind the condition of this road,” said Mehta.

According to experts, the BMC is still going about it all wrong when it comes to road construction. Asphalt roads are not a good idea for Mumbai, considering the rainfall that the city weathers annually. The BMC has said it is converting several asphalt stretches across the city to concrete, yet data reveals that between 2012 to March of 2018, Rs 3,538.61crore was spent repairing or reconstructing concrete roads. More than Rs 5,100 crore was spent on asphalt roads. On paper, the amount of money spent by the BMC on Mumbai’s roads looks impressive. However, with the city plagued by contractors who compromise on quality, poor vigilance by civic officials and flawed planning, the road ahead looks rocky for Mumbai. ment over its ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (save daughters, educate daughters) programme, Gandhi said the move was actually for “saving the daughters from BJP MLAS.” in an apparent reference to some BJP leaders accused in rape cases.

Slamming Modi for his silence on Bihar’s Muzaffarpur shelter home rape case, Gandhi said, “A number of minor girls were raped in Bihar. But he cannot speak a single word condemning the incident, while his party members defend the accused.”

“In UP, their MLA is a rape accused but the Prime Minister and the BJP president do not speak a word against it,” he said, referring to BJP legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a rape case suspect who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in April this year.

“Modi has talked about changing India. He talked about 70 years of Congress rule. He was correct because what is happening to women in the last four years did not happen in the last 3,000 years, leave alone 70 years,” Gandhi said.

He attacked the government for not bringing the women’s reservation bill in Parliament. “If they bring the women’s reservation bill in Parliament, then Congress will support it. And if the government fails to bring the bill in the House and if we come to power, we shall get it passed in Parliament,” Gandhi said, claiming that various institutions were under attack from the BJP and the RSS. “They (RSS and BJP) have devastated the country. Institutions are under attack, be it Parliament, assemblies and the judiciary. Minorities, Dalits, women, tribals and small traders are under attack,” he said. “The Congress party and the opposition are working together to fight the ideology of the BJP. We are fighting an ideological battle,” Gandhi said. munity.”parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar said that during his speech, Modi recalled his victory speech after the 2014 polls in which he had said his government would be dedicated to the poor, villages and backward sections of society. He said these bills underline this commitment.

“A historic law has been passed and another is likely to be passed in a day or two,” Kumar said, referring to SC/ST law which is yet to be cleared by the Rajya Sabha.

BJP members of Parliament from the backward classes felicitated Modi for the “historic” achievement. BJP general secretary Bhupendra Yadav moved a resolution praising him for fulfilling a long-pending demand of the backward classes. Union minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, former minister Hukumdev Narayan Yadav and Rajya Sabha member V Muraleedharan seconded the motion. Modi asked BJP MPS to return to their constituencies after Parliament’s current Monsoon session ends on August 10. He said they should inform people about the decisions without hurting the sentiments of any other community. “All of you should be felicitated for being part of the decision,” Modi said.