Mumbai: In a tweet, former Congress corporator Ravi Raja has raised the question of dangerous manholes in the city. He has revealed a shocking piece of information ahead of the monsoon season. Out of 1 lakh manholes in the city, only 25 thousand have been secured by nets by the BMC.
Raja also recalled an incident from 2017 when Dr Deepak Amrapurkar, a gastroenterologist at the Bombay Hospital died after falling into a manhole near Prabhadevi on August 29th. Amrapurkar was returning home after getting the news of heavy waterlogging in the area. When his car got stuck near Deepak Cinema on Elphinstone Road, he got off and decided to walk home. It is here that Amrapurkar fell down an open manhole and his body was discovered a few days later at Worli at the end of the sewage pipeline.
It has been two years since the BMC held elections for corporators in the city. Several developmental projects have been left hanging in the air due to a lack of leaders to fast-track the action. This year's weather prediction notifies significant rains during the monsoon season. As highlighted by Raja's tweet, the issue of infrastructural safety during the rains needs urgent redressal. Ravi Raja has appealed to the Commissioner to inquire into the BMC's lack of action over securing the manholes.