Images of damaged sidewalks and waterlogging on Commercial Street in Bengaluru surfaced on Saturday, July 24th. The pictures and videos showed that the cobblestones had loosened in many areas and water was pouring out of a pipe from the footpath. It happened just a day after Karnataka’s Prime Minister BS Yediyurappa visited the street, where he praised officials for the work that the Smart City project is doing to beautify the area.
In an interview with TNM, an official made it clear that the waterlogging was caused because the connection to the drainage had not yet been completed. “The work is not finished yet and we did not claim to have finished it. It is still in the final stages of completion, ”said Prahalad, Chief Engineer, Smart City, Bengaluru.
“The pipes were still kept open as some drainage and electrical connections have yet to be completed. The detached cobblestones that could be seen in the pictures were places where we haven’t finished the cement finishing, ”he said. And added that the images were purposely where the work was pending, supposedly to make them look bad.
“We should finish the project by July 30th, but it’s raining all the time so it’s being delayed. We have to work this through and we will complete the work soon, ”he added.
Commercial Street in Bengaluru was selected for beautification in 2019 as part of the Smart City project. The cobblestone street should be made more pedestrian-friendly in order to increase the number of pedestrians for the shops there. Work started in May 2020 but suffered several delays.
On Friday July 23, CM Yediyurappa visited Commercial Street with Karnataka’s Treasury Secretary R. Ashoka and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palikes (BBMP) Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta to inspect the beautification work. Following the inspection, Yediyurappa said he has also visited other locations in the city where similar projects are taking place and all of them, including Commercial Street, will be completed soon.
Previously, on July 21, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Center (KSNDMC) predicted that the BBMP area would experience occasional light to moderate rain. It predicted that the weather in the area would be “generally cloudy skies with the occasional very light to moderate rainfall” through July 24th
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