Guidelines state contractors should test repair material used to fill potholes, and BMC even has a state-of-the-art lab for the purpose. Instead, official apathy and private greed has ensured that sub-standard material is used to 'repair' faulty roads

There's a reason why potholes keep reappearing on your roads each monsoon, and it has everything to do with the apathy of government officials and the contractors responsible for the repair job. While the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has a state-of-the-art facility in Worli to test samples of the material to be used for repairing potholes, contractors barely use the facility and officials don't bother procuring them either.


The BMC has a laboratory in Worli to test the quality of the material
used to repair potholes. Pics/Iqbal Ansari

This clearly overlooks the 2004 recommendations of the court-appointed Standing Technical Advisory Committee that state that the material used for repair work should first be tested, either by the BMC or institutes such as the VJTI in Matunga. At present, private contractors claim that the asphalt plants from where they source the repair material have labs where it is tested, and therefore do not send samples to the BMC lab.


The BMC's asphalt testing lab at Worli has recently been upgraded with
state-of-the-art technology to conduct quality tests