Pothole peril: PWD accuses Delhi Police of 'interfering' in their work

Facing flak for shoddy work over fixing the killer potholes in the national capital which recently led to the death of a man, the Aam Admi Party (AAP)-led Government on Monday accused the Delhi Police of obstructing their work and not letting them function.

"PWD has never needed permission to fix roads, but Delhi Police did not allow us to do our jobs and confiscated the vehicles of PWD officials. Then on 8, 14 and 21 July, they wrote a letter to the DCP asking him to intervene saying that his people were not letting us work," Delhi Transport Minister Satyendra Jain told ANI here.

Jain had earlier as well, pinned the blame on the Delhi Police for the accident in Delhi's Vasant Kunj area and said that he had written to DCP traffic in connection with the repairing of the pothole, where a man fell and died.

"We had sent men for repairing that pot hole but the Delhi Police denied. We wrote twice to DCP traffic requesting the repair of the pothole. On 14 and 21 July, the Delhi Police confiscated our vehicles which were deployed to repair the damaged and did not allow the work to take place," said Jain.

However, the victim's kin have accused the Delhi Government of severe laxity towards the bad roads.

"My son will not come back. But how many more accidents and how many more lives?" asked the mother of Praveen Kumar, who became a victim to the killer potholes.

A man was run over by a tanker after his motorcycle fell into a rainwater-filled pothole in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj area.

45-year-old Praveen was riding a motorcycle, which fell into the big pothole near Square Mall in Vasant Kunj and was mowed down by the tanker at around 7:30 pm on Saturday.

Fatal accidents involving potholes have claimed over 100 lives across the cities every year.