How many times we have seen freshly-asphalted road dug up repeatedly later to lay pipes for electricity, water or Underground Drainage (UGD) connections to new houses? Though the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) or Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) collects road-cutting charges from the owners of the buildings in most cases, the civic bodies seldom repairs the damaged surface and sub-structure of the road.
When the work on widening and reconstruction of the 80 ft. road, running for nearly a km between B and C Block in Vijayanagar 3rd Stage, is under way, the local Residents’ Welfare Association could not help but foresee a likely damage to the new road as no construction had been taken up on a total of 52 plots. So, they approached the area MLA G.T. Deve Gowda and Commissioner of MUDA Dinesh Kumar with a proposal for MUDA to lay the required underground pipelines for water, electricity and UGD before laying the bitumen surface or tarring of the road. The charges towards road cutting, material and labour incurred by the MUDA could be collected from the owners of the sites when they apply for an approval of their building plan.
This way, the Vijaynagar 3rd Stage RWA thinks the road will last for more than a decade, thereby not only saving tax payers money, but also preventing damage to the road and providing the residents a pothole-free road for a longer period of time.
Even twenty years after allotment of housing plots in Vijayangar 3rd Stage B and C Blocks, the Association said there were at least 41 vacant housing plots measuring 50x80 ft in C Block and 11 vacant plots measuring 40x60 ft in B Block on the 80-feet road taken up for widening and reconstruction.
“MUDA (or MCC) collects ‘road-cutting charges’ from the plot/site owners at the time of construction of their houses. These charges are intended to be spent by MCC to repair the damage caused by cutting of the roads. However, it is well known that such repair is not done in time or more often not done at all, and the road, which was damaged due to the road cutting exposes the road users (2-wheelers and 4-wheelers) to life-threatening hazard of potholes and road cuts. This is wholly avoidable if foresight or forethought is given to scientific planning and execution of road construction or widening”, the Association said in its memorandum.
A delegation of the association led by its president Ravi Kumar and Legal Advisor Mandetira N. Subramani met Mr. Gowda and Mr. Dinesh Kumar and submitted a memorandum on Monday. “If the suggestion is accepted for Vijaynagar 3rd Stage, it would set a good precedent for other MUDA layouts throughout Mysuru and also set a good example of good engineering planning and practice for our state of Karnataka,” said Mr. Ravi Kumar.
According to Mr. Subramani, Chamundeshwari MLA G.T. Deve Gowda assured the residents that he would impress upon MUDA Commissioner Dinesh Kumar to implement the association’s suggestion with immediate effect.
