Vadodara: In a city where freshly laid roads barely get time to settle, digging them up has almost become routine. In Saraswatinagar in the Navayard area, a newly constructed road was dug up within about a week of its completion in Feb, triggering public anger and leaving the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) red-faced. The civic body later sought explanations from its engineers for the lapse.Saraswatinagar is far from an isolated case. In the Chhani Jakatnaka area, a recently laid road was dug up in Jan to lay a power cable. Gotri Road, which had offered a smooth drive after resurfacing a couple of years ago, is now scarred with trenches as work on power cables and drainage lines progresses. Besides excavation for new projects, sinkholes have also appeared on recently constructed roads in Karelibaug and Makarpura, with the repairs themselves damaging stretches further.Civic activist Kamlesh Parmar, who frequently raises urban infrastructure issues, pointed to Khodiyarnagar where a good road was dug up for drainage work. Parmar has also criticised the civic body in the past when sinkholes appeared near locations where repair work had recently been carried out.Jaha Desai, a former corporator who highlighted two incidents of newly laid roads being dug up for a drainage line and a power cable, said that while multiple development works may be necessary in the same area, better planning is essential. “It can happen if both works are required. But it is the responsibility of officials to ensure that they are carried out in the proper sequence,” he said. VMC has been struggling to ensure coordination between its own departments and external agencies to prevent freshly built roads from being repeatedly dug up. The efforts, however, have had limited success. Officials say that in many cases, drainage or water line projects cannot be executed before road works because funds for those utilities are sanctioned later. “Such works can be taken up only after the budget allocation comes through. By then, the road on the same stretch may already have been constructed or resurfaced,” an official said.Centralised nod for road diggingThe Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) is making yet another attempt to curb indiscriminate digging of roads. The civic body has withdrawn the powers of ward offices to grant permissions for road excavation.VMC commissioner Arun Mahesh Babu said that permissions for digging roads for any work must now be routed only through the city engineer’s office and the municipal commissioner’s office. These will serve as the single points for granting approval to both civic departments and outside agencies seeking to excavate roads.
