BBMP fails to asphalt dug up road in Doddakallasandra

Residents of Doddakallasandra off Kanakapura Road find the only access road dug up and left without blacktop, owing to shoddy civic work by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).

The area, among the ones newly added to the BBMP administration, had bare minimum of facilities until the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) dug up the road in October 2017 to lay their water pipeline.

Only a month before the civic work, the BBMP had asphalted the road in September 2017. After that, the Palike quite inexplicably took up the Under Ground Drainage pipe laying work, which it is not mandated to do.

Praveen, one of the residents, is still clueless as to why BBMP took up the work. “First, (laying UGD) is not BBMP’s responsibility. Still, they carried out the work when it was raining heavily this September (2018) and didn’t bother to asphalt the road. Even levelling of the road was done much later,” he said.

He said residents in the area, especially the senior citizens and children, found it harder to breathe due to the dust kicked up by the vehicles on the road.

“When I tried contacting the local corporator, she said nothing could be done for the next two-and-a-half years since the road was asphalted in 2017. This’s the typical lack of coordination we see among the civic agencies,” Praveen said.

Ward corporator Shobha Gowda assured DH that she would get the road blacktopped at the earliest. “We got the UGD done here through MP. We’ll asphalt the road shortly,” she said.

The corporator, however, was not aware that the UGD lines to discharge waste water were actually diverted to another storm water drain. She refused to comment on the issue.

. He said the civic body is waiting for the BWSSB to begin the UGD work and asphalt the road after it is over.

But a BWSSB engineer said it would be a further two or three months before his agency could take up the UGD work in the area.