While the horror of this monsoon’s potholed roads still fresh in the city’s memory, the BMC has cleared almost all its road engineers of any dereliction of duty.This remarkably lenient assessment of road engineers’ performance in keeping Mumbai’s roads free of potholes was made possible by a grading system which restricted an engineer’s responsibility to only assigning a pothole for repairs to contractors.So naturally, while contractors have been fined Rs 2.29 crore for unsatisfactory job of filling potholes, the engineers have emerged spotless from the monsoon’s cratered, slushy roads.Citizens’ groups, however, have questioned how the civic body’s road engineers could get a ‘job well done’ remark in their files when the city endured a horrific rainy season, with almost all roads full of potholes and even repaired craters reappearing with hours of being filled. “Isn’t it the responsibility of road engineers to make sure road contractors fill potholes on time and properly. If contractors are being fined, why are engineers being let off,” asked Makarand Narvekar, citizen corporator from Colaba.Sources said the grading system was introduced to shield engineers. Till last year, an engineer was fined Rs 1000 for every day of delay in filling potholes. At the end of the year, BMC realised its engineers would have to pay fines totaling Rs 1 crore. But in cynical turnaround, the accounts department, citing miscalculation, reduced the fine to just Rs 8.34 lakh.This year, under tremendous pressure from the engineers’ association, the municipal commissioner formulated the new grading system that put the onus of filling potholes on contractors. One positive mark was to be awarded for assigning a pothole to a contractor within 48 hours of it being reported.Two negative marks were to be awarded for a pothole assigned after the 48-hour deadline. And to root out the risk of fines, engineers were allowed to balance negative points with positive ones. So, if an engineer’s positive points did not balance his negative markings, he was to be charged a fine of Rs 50 for every negative point. If an engineer collected 100 negative points, an adverse noting was to be made in his service record.Since assigning a pothole requires only moving files, all road engineers have cleared the test. Of the 350 road engineers in the city, only 15 or 20 have earned any negative points. And these few engineers have not more than 10 negative points – that’s a maximum of Rs 500 fine.Of course, not a single engineer has got even anywhere near 100 negative points – that means no adverse remark in anybody’s service record.So, for a back-breaking commute on city’s road during this unusually long monsoon and, of course, deaths on roads caused by potholes, what the BMC’s road engineers have got is this – a pat on their back.Additional Municipal Commissioner S V RSrinivas refused to comment saying he had not seen the report on road engineers’ grading system. Chief Engineer, roads, Datatray Dixit did not respond to calls and text messages.