In Thane, a 23-year-old lost his life after his bike hit a pothole. This is not an isolated case. Every year hundreds die or face injuries due to pothole-related accidents in the monsoon. Are they compensated?
Incessant rains continued to lash Mumbai and its neighbouring districts for the second consecutive day on Wednesday, causing flooding and traffic snarls. Yet again normal life has taken a hit with the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) predicting heavy showers until Friday.
With rains, come the usual woes of waterlogging and potholes. It’s not a petty problem but one that has proved to be deadly.
In Thane, a man was run over by a bus after he fell from his motorcycle after hitting a pothole on the Ghodbunder Road on Tuesday. He was reportedly crushed to death.
While police have registered a case against the bus driver, locals have blamed the potholed road for his death. They claim that the stretch on the busy road has been damaged and developed several craters following torrential rainfall in the region over the last few days.
However, this is not an isolated incident. Potholes are a big problem that plagues Maharashtra. Every year thousands of lives are lost because of damaged roads. But who is to blame. We take a look at the statistics and what is being done about the issue.
The statistics cannot be ignored
In 2021, a pothole-riddled road claimed the life of a mother and son in Thane’s Bhiwandi district. Another 23-year-old was killed after his motorcycle hit a pothole on Ghodbunder Road. While these deaths made headlines, many more go unreported. The statistics are not in single digits and they simply cannot be ignored.
A report analysed by the Maharashtra State Highway Police revealed that potholes led to 522 road accidents in the state, claiming 166 lives and leaving 343 people seriously injured in 2018. It is said that more than 50 per cent of the mishaps occur because of poor conditions of roads.
Mumbai and Thane districts are where most accidents take place and the problem is chronic.
Who is responsible for pothole repairs?
In all, 91,965 km of roads in Maharashtra fall under the jurisdiction of the state Public Works Department (PWD). While national highway stretches of 9,347 km and 2,825 km fall under the PWD and Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, respectively, the National Highway Authorities of India, a body under the Union government, has to look after the national highway stretches of 5,577 km in the state, reports The Indian Express.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), PWD, and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) are all responsible for roads in Mumbai. The civic body maintains a majority of the road network – about 2,000 kilometres – in Mumbai.
However, the lack of coordination between these agencies means that it is difficult to keep a check on pothole repairs.
Blame game
The blame game between the Shiv Sena-ruled BMC and other agencies over potholes continues year after year. In 2018, the party protested and blamed the BJP for the poor condition of roads under the PWD and the MMRDA.
Last year, the BJP alleged that the civic body had spent more than Rs 14,000 on repairing one crater and 33,000 were fixed. Yet the material used for repairs was shoddy.
While the BMC takes up repair work every monsoon within Mumbai, the potholes are shabbily repaired. It only takes a few heavy showers for the filling material to wash away and expose the craters. The civic body spends at least Rs 1000 crore annually on road repairs.
In Thane, the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) plays a similar role to the BMC. An amount of Rs 2I4 crore has reportedly been sanctioned by the state for road repair work in the city after the TMC received criticism for potholes last year. Action against road contractors for deaths due to potholes was promised by a senior police official.
Last September, the then Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray warned that action would be taken against contractors and engineers for poor quality work and not utilising funds properly. He directed officials to construct quality roads using modern technology.
“In areas with high rainfall, if concrete roads are constructed instead of tar roads, it will help in maintaining quality and pothole-free roads,” the-then deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar had said.
When the matter went to court
However, chief ministers come and go, and governments change but the problem remains unsolved. Even courts have taken notice.
In 2017, the Bombay High Court formed a two-member committee to look into the maintenance of roads. Based on the suggestion of the panel, BMC publishes a list of WhatsApp contact numbers of road engineers where citizens can submit complaints related to potholes.
In 2018, the Supreme Court termed “unacceptable” the death of nearly 15,000 people in road accidents caused by potholes in the last five years across the country and said the number was probably more than those killed on the border or by terrorists. This indicates that authorities concerned are not maintaining the roads properly, a bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur said.
The bench observed that many authorities like the municipal corporations, NHAI, concessionaires working with them or the state road departments would be responsible for these deaths as they were not maintaining the roads, reported news agency PTI.
It raised the issue of deaths because of potholes in Mumbai and said that according to reports there were around 4,000 potholes in the city.
Potholes led to 522 road accidents in Maharashtra, claiming 166 lives and leaving 343 people seriously injured in 2018. PTI
The compensation
The Supreme Court had observed that no compensation was paid to victims’ families in case of pothole-related deaths. Legal representatives of the deceased have to “live with the unforeseen tragedy due to lack of concern shown by the authorities”, it said in 2018.
In 2019, the BMC law committee asked the administration to come up with a compensation policy for citizens killed or injured in rain-related accidents like pothole mishaps, tree falls, or bridge collapses caused directly or indirectly because of the negligence of the civic body.
“The BMC cannot wash its hands off when citizens are dying year after year,” Shiv Sena’s Sheetal Mhatre, the chairperson of the Law and Revenue Committee of the civic body, had said. But the corporation was convinced about forming a policy to provide aid due to monsoon-related deaths and said it would consider the plan, The Hindustan Times reported.
The civic body had also announced in 2019 that would pay compensation of Rs 500 to citizens if their pothole-related complaints were not taken up in 24 hours. However, the authorities would decide if a road cavity qualifies as a pothole.
The rest of the nation
The pothole problem is not restricted to Mumbai or Maharashtra alone, as the Supreme Court pointed out. According to 2017 data, Uttar Pradesh recorded the maximum number of pothole deaths (3,428), followed by Maharashtra (1,410), Madhya Pradesh (1,244) and West Bengal (783).
In 2020, around 3,564 road accidents took place in the country because of potholes, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari informed the Parliament.
With inputs from agencies
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