Tata Power blames BMC for killer pothole

Mumbai: Tata Power Company (TPC) has blamed BMC for not carrying out pothole repairs on Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road (JVLR) that led to the death of 16-year old Prakash Bilhore in July 2015.
On Tuesday, TOI reported that the Aarey Colony police will file a chargesheet in the Borivli magistrate’s court in connection with this case. The police booked a civic official as well as an employee of Tata Power.
Tata Power spokesperson said, “We applied for permission to BMC (K East ward) for excavation for repairing an under-ground cable fault. Permission was granted from 29th May to 31st May 2015. The fault was immediately repaired and excavated area backfilled and compacted on 31st May 2015 by Tata Power, as is done for all such jobs.”
He added that the company informed the BMC-Mukadam at site and the concerned engineer of K East ward regarding completion of work on June 1 2015.
“As per BMC rules and for their own reasons the reinstatement is not allowed to be carried out by excavating agency but is done by BMC only and they are required to do so within seven days from completion of work by the utility. However, it can be seen that in this current case, BMC did not carry out reinstatement work till 28th July 2015 (58 days after completion of work by Tata Power) which perhaps resulted in washing away of the backfilled earth during the monsoon. This pothole then led to the unfortunate accident on 28th July 2015.”