Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
The Aurangabad Bench of Bombay High Court comprising Ravindra Ghuge and Justice Y G Khobragade has scheduled the hearing on a public interest litigation (PIL) on October 3. It was brought to notice of the court that the new water supply scheme works which were to be completed on priority basis but are still lying pending, apart from shortcomings in the work done.
When the case came up for hearing, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) lawyer Deepak Manorkar brought into notice of the court that the office has previously brought into notice of the court that the contractor had damaged the buttress wall supporting the flyover near SRP camp on Dhule-Solapur National Highway. The bench took cognizance of it in its order on August 22. Later on, the contractor submitted a statement in the court, on September 7, stating that the project representative and NHAI representative will jointly inspect the damage on September 8 and then the repairing work of the wall will start from September 9. However, 12 days have passed, and the contractor has not yet started the work. The estimated cost of the said work is Rs 5 crore, underlined Adv Manorkar.
Meanwhile, the lawyer of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation (CSMC), Sambhaji Tope, also brought to notice of the High Court that the letter issued by the contractor stating that the elevated storage reservoir (ESR) at Hanuman Tekdi has been handed over to municipal corporation is wrong. The said letter is of August month.
Besides, it should be made mandatory that the contractor should hand over possession of each ESR to Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP) and then the latter should hand over to CSMC after conducting proper testing and ensuring that whether it is appropriate to transfer or not then only it should be handed over to the CSMC. Contractor cannot directly hand over the ESRs to the CSMC.
Tope also pointed out that the labourers of the contractor are frequently damaging the main water pipeline of the CSMC supplying water to the city. Hence, on occurrence of the damage, the CSMC has to deploy its technical and experts team to repair the damage. In the meantime, the water supply gets disrupted; time is wasted in repairing the damage and the rotation schedule of the water supply gets collapsed. Adv Tope requested the court that he will submit the details through civil applications mentioning the details like number of times the contractor has damaged the pipelines and the places of damages in the next hearing.