Ensure quality material, honest contractors for road work: HC

The quality of road repairs undertaken in the city ahead of monsoon should be so good that the civic body should be able to guarantee the work for at least next five years, the Bombay High Court observed today.
A division bench of justices V M Kanade and P R Bora directed for a joint meeting of officials from the BMC, Public Works Department, Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, Joint Commissioner of Police (traffic) and a senior police official on the next date of hearing.
The court asked everyone to come prepared with solutions and said that the corporation should appoint honest and hardworking contractors and use quality repair material.

"Ensure that the quality is such that you can guarantee that it will last for the next five to six years," the bench said.
"In some states like Karnataka, all roads are very good. In Mumbai, even the Marine Drive stretch is bumpy," it said.
The bench was hearing a suo moto Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on the poor condition of roads in Mumbai and the failure of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to prevent and repair potholes every monsoon.
BMC counsel Anil Sakhre informed the court that as per the first phase of plan, work on 94 critical roads and traffic junctions has begun. He said that the corporation has identified 938 stretches that required repairs and the tenders for this work would be issued next month.

The civic body has claimed that it will complete all repair works by May.