Four days after a Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) corporator had confined civic contractors for five hours demanding immediate action on pothole-ridden roads, MNS activists and corporator Dilip Lande roughed up four contractors and civic road engineers on Friday.

MNS party leader in BMC, Dilip Lande, corporator of the L ward which comprises Kurla area, said party workers forced the responsible contractors and engineers to sit in the road craters.

"I called the four contractors and road engineers responsible for the roads in my ward. I accompanied them from the starting point of L ward near Sion to the end point of the ward, showed them the condition of the roads and finally made them sit in the pothole to understand what is a pothole and what needs to be fixed," Lande said.

The potholes had remained unattended for weeks, and children and parents from four schools located along LBS road passing through L ward area had requested him to take action.

According to the civic pothole-tracking website www.voiceofcitizen.com, of the 14,135 potholes reported across Mumbai, L ward, with 743 pothole complaints is one of the three wards with the highest number of complaints. Of these, the website claims only 56 potholes in the ward are pending repairs while close to 3,000 potholes across the city are still awaiting repairs.

"There are numerous potholes on the LBS Marg leading to Mulund and Thane. For a long time now I have been raising the issue with the BMC and even spoken about it in the standing committee but no action has been taken," Lande said. "The BMC says potholes reported will be fixed in 48 hours, the Mayor says on record that the potholes will be fixed in 24 hours but nothing has been done and for the last 15 days I have been complaining to the responsible officers. Public money is simply being wasted."

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