Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena criticized the decision of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to spend ₹54 crore on roads that are under default liability. Party leaders said the civil service should have hired the same contractors who repaired the works and redone the roads instead of spending money from its own budget.
Former PMC opposition leaders and BJP members Ujwal Keskar and Suhas Joshi wrote a letter to the PMC commissioner stating that the PMC had recently approved five road maintenance packages.
Keskar and Joshi said, “The cost of the five tenders was ₹54 crore. According to our main information, PMC has spent money on its trunk routes despite the fact that these parts fall under liability in the event of a fault (DLP).
Tenders for these routes were launched from October 2022 to March 2023. When contacted, a PMC road department official declined to comment, "How do I respond to the political allegations," he said.
According to Chief Shiv Sena (UBT), Prashant Badhe, once a contractor builds a road, he is responsible if the road is damaged within a specific period of time. "During the construction of all road works, there is a condition that the term of liability for damage is from 3 to 5 years. It turns out that potholes have developed on many roads that have been repaired. recent and mostly due to a lapse in liability.”
A DLP is a contract term in which the contractor can be held responsible for the deterioration of road quality for a specific period of time - usually three years. Under the DLP, contractors can be held responsible for the quality of the roadway for a specific period of time under the Bombay City Companies Act (BMC). “Ideally, the PMC should have a system in place to understand which route is responsible for the fault,” says Keskar. Each road must clearly state the time limit for people to know. The Commissioner must conduct an investigation because there is a good chance that there is corruption.
