Bumpy ride awaits Bappa as devotees bid farewell

 

 

 

With the ten-day Ganeshotsav ending on Tuesday on the occasion of Anant Chaturdashi, the roads of the city will be all crowded with the Visarjan processions. Amid that, the age old problems of potholes on roads have lead to the sprawling of concerns in the minds of the denizens of the city. As earlier reported by ‘The Hitavada’, the roads in the city are at the helm of two major bodies- Public Works Department and the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC). The former has the responsibility of maintaining the major roads of the city, and the latter looks after the interior roads along with some prominent ones, including Link Road Number 1, Arch Bridge and BRTS Corridor. But none of them, even seem to take pain to repair the roads. Such situations were witnessed at the routes leading to prominent immersion ghats of the city- Khatlapura and Kamalapati ghats.

 

The Khatlapura immersion ghat is one of the prominent ones in the city. Situated on the banks of Lower Lake, it receives prominent footfall on the immersion day. Sadly, due to the negligence of the authorities and the laxative attitude of the officials, the roads leading to the ghat are deeply dilapidated. Cracks are on rise there which may pose hurdles to the smooth commotion of processions. The roads here still seem affected by rains exposing loopholes of the system. With the Indian meteorological Department (IMD) predicting rainfall on Tuesday, the situation becomes more relevant. Notably, Khatlapura has been a witness to a major accident in 2019 where 11 men drowned to death during such procession as the boat carrying the devotees had overturned in the mid of the lake. As per information, Additional Commissioner (ADC) Nidhi Singh of the corporation is the nodal officer for the ghat.

 

Assistant Commissioner Ekta Agarwal has been given the responsibility as Officer-in-Charge and Executive Engineer-in-Charge Anil Tatwade, Assistant Engineer-in-Charge Gaurav Parmar and Assistant Engineer-in-Charge Pradeep Bindayya have been given the responsibility as Assistant Officer-in-Charge. At the Rani Kamalapati ghat, other than that of roads, the perennial problem of drains is rampant. Open drains are abundantly located at the region. The roads here seem to narrate a hopelessness and remorse with the reasons being known to all. The Arch Bridge and other roads there are at the helm of BMC. At Kamalapati Ghat, Additional Commissioner Harshit Tiwari has been assigned the responsibility of nodal officer, Superintendent Engineer Santosh Gupta as In-charge Officer and Executive Engineer Ashish Srivastava, Assistant Engineer in-charge Kashav Pathak and Sub-Engineer Ajay Solanki have been assigned the responsibility of In-charge Assistant Officer. Ironically, as per the release shared by BMC, proper arrangements including road repairing works have been started.

 

“The responsibility of ensuring the removal of temporary obstructions such as food carts and other types of temporary shops on the routes of various immersion ghats, vehicles, cranes, tents, mikes, lights, fire safety, fire fighting equipment, divers, life saving equipment, cleanliness, mobile toilets, repair of roads, maintenance of electric wires and adequate lighting, pruning of trees as per the requirement, beautification and maintenance of central verge and side verge, CCTV cameras, removal of stray cattle etc. within the time limit and maintaining them continuously till the completion of the work has also been separately assigned to the officers.” The information said but the situation on ground is all different in the regard of road repairing.