HYDERABAD: The Telangana high court on Tuesday pulled up the GHMC for maintaining roads near VIP areas only while leaving the rest of the city to grapple with potholes on bad roads.
“Property tax and other taxes are being paid by all citizens, but unfortunately the GHMC is concentrating more on VIP areas such as MLA and MP colonies and Prashasan Nagar where IAS and IPS officers reside. All other areas have been ignored, leaving people to struggle with horrible potholes on Hyderabad’s roads,” said a bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy while resuming hearing in a PIL highlighting bad city roads.
The bench, which took up a report published by ‘The Economic Times’ on an old couple spending their pension money to fill potholes to prevent road accidents, asked the GHMC to explain the steps it was taking to make roads safe. It said that the municipal body was undermining the image of Hyderabad as an emerging global city by neglecting maintenance of roads.With the bench making its displeasure public, GHMC on Tuesday roped in senior counsel S Niranjan Reddy who said that they have now come out with a new system known as comprehensive road management project (CRMP) where contractors were made accountable. “Under the new policy, laying of roads and maintenance was the contractor’s job and he was responsible for potholes,” the senior counsel said.
“We have also started using polymer modified bitumen which is water resistant and can withstand heavy water logging,” he added. The bench, however, said that using polymer bitumen was nothing new. “May be it is brought to city now,” the bench said.
On why the GHMC could not fix roads much before the monsoon, he admitted that they could not do enough but attributed the failure to lack of sufficient finances. The bench reminded the GHMC counsel that the municipal body could act in advance as the water-logging areas were mostly the same spots during every rainy season.
When senior counsel L Ravi Chander, appearing for another PIL petitioner, brought to the notice of the bench that the Centre has selected Hyderabad for developing roads and other infrastructure, the GHMC counsel said that they were facing funds problems even after factoring in all such financial support. “We are generating funds on our own, but maybe we have to now seek state help. We filled as many as 28,000 potholes in the last five years,” he said when the bench enquired if GHMC had sought financial help from the state.
Niranjan Reddy also said that GHMC has been doing a good job despite the constraints and today Hyderabad was next only to Delhi in providing civic amenities. “Delhi being the national capital will never suffer funds crunch. We also made use of empty roads during lockdown to repair several roads,” the senior counsel said.
