BBMP Chief Engineer S Somashekar told Deccan Herald that the company had dug up the road at three locations on Brunton Road without permission. A penalty would be levied on Airtel after measuring the area of the road that had been destroyed and the costs it would take to restore that. “We will charge them double this amount,” he said.
He said that a company had to take permission from the zonal engineer’s office for digging the road. The engineers then would take a look at where the repair work needs to be done and submit a report. Based on the report, the Additional Commissioner would decide whether to accord permission for the digging.
Till March 31 of this year, the permission was given by the Duct cell of BBMP. “I checked with the duct cell and they had not given Airtel any permission to dig,” Somashekar clarified.
Deccan Herald had reported that the telecom company had dug up a pit without authorisation on Brunton Road on Sunday and inadvertently broke a BWSSB water pipe.
The local residents had to wait for Monday before any of the officials even responded to their calls to fix the leak. Meanwhile, potable water kept flowing out of the leak for one entire day, before it was finally fixed on late Monday afternoon. BWSSB has already lodged a complaint with the police.