Politics Insight News Without Politics
(Pi Bureau)
Virendra Singh Rawat
Business Writer
After drawing flak from the opposition parties for failing to deliver its promise of ensuring pothole free roads in Uttar Pradesh by June 15, 2017, the Yogi Adityanath government has now decided to employ web technology for time bound completion of works and transparency.
Soon after coming to power on March 19, 2017, chief minister Yogi Adityanath had announced that before the onset of monsoons, the roads in UP would be freed of all potholes by relaying and repairing.
The dismal quality of roads in UP had been a favourite jibe of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the previous Akhilesh Yadav regime, especially in run up to the 2017 UP poll.
However, even after relapse of almost four months of the deadline, the roads in UP have still not been rid of potholes and remain in bad shape.
Now, UP chief secretary Rajive Kumar has directed the nodal Public Works Department (PWD) officials to employ web technology to upload actual photographs of the works related to these roads on the departmental website for verification and archiving. Senior officials would randomly make spot verification of these civil works and issue completion certificates.
At the same time, roadside hoardings would also be put up in the state to apprise people of the ground progress in this regard.
In a review meeting here today, Kumar was informed that of the total about 3.52,077 km roads in UP, about 1,21,034 km had been identified as potholed and required to be worked upon.
So far, about 80,383 km roads had been repaired, which merely forms 65 percent of the potholed roads, while civil works on the remaining length of the roads continue in the state.
Meanwhile, the chief secretary also warned of action against slack engineers and officials if roads were found to be broken in spot verification.
Besides, state roads needing special repair jobs are scheduled to be done away with by March 2018 while conforming to standards, Kumar underlined.
Of the 85,160 km potholed roads allotted to PWD alone, the department had repaired 72,065 km roads so far. Several other state departments apart from National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) have also the mandate of repairing roads allotted to them under the programme.
