Mumbai: ‘Build–Dig–Build’: Chandivali’s New Concrete Road Torn Up Weeks After Completion

Mumbai: A Chandivali road—that was concretised just a few months ago—is being dug up again, leaving residents frustrated. Locals recount that the road was in a run down state for several years before it being concretised and opened up recently, only to be now again dug up. At the site, around 200 metres of the stretch has been dug up, leaving only one side for motorists to drive one side. When contacted civic officials said that the stretch from Nahar Amritshakti to Sangarsh Nagar, was built by Summer Developers a private company- and only recently handed over to the BMC. A road department official said that the road was taken up again for concretisation as a part of its mega cement concrete road works. "There's no sewerage and water pipelines laid on the road which is important. This road was already proposed under the cement concretisation project and therefore works on it have begun," said a road department official.Residents, who endured years of delays during the initial concretisation, expressed anger on social media. The Chandivali Citizens Welfare Association (CCWA) in a post of X said: "Congratulations @mybmc! After spending ‘years' to finally complete the concrete road between Nahar and Sangarsh Nagar, Chandivali, they've realised they forgot something vital… and are now digging the newly built road. BMC strategy: Build–Dig–Build. Efficient use of public money and time!"Mandeep Singh Makkar, founder of CCWA who visited the site on Monday said that the BMC should not have taken back the road from the developer itself. "The developer got additional FSI for making this road, then why wasn't the civic staff inspecting when the road work was being carried out by the developer? Firstly the condition of the road isn't good which shows that during its construction there was a lack of supervision. Secondly, the BMC shouldn't have taken back the road till the time the work was completed as per the civic body's requirement. This is waste of resources as well as frustrating for residents line us who use this road on a daily basis," said Makkar. When contacted additional municipal commissioner Abhijit Bangar, in charge of the civic roads department he agreed that there was no point to break the entire road up which had just been laid. He said, " I have already instructed the road department to check on why this road was taken up for concretisation again if it had been recently concretised as it amounts of waste of resources."