As cement concrete roads crumble across city, Shelar demands quality audit by SIT | Mumbai News

Mumbai: Within hours of TOI’s second report on cement concrete (CC) roads in various parts of the city developing cracks in just months of being laid, city BJP chief and Bandra West MLA Ashish Shelar on Friday met BMC chief Bhushan Gagrani demanding that a special investigation team be set up to look into the works’ quality.
TOI had on Thursday and Friday flagged crumbling new CC roads in Santacruz, Bandra West, Powai and Andheri’s Lokhandwala.
In a letter submitted to Gagrani, Shelar said he had got several complaints from citizens over poor quality of CC road works, and referred to his visit to Santacruz’s Bhargav Road, which was highlighted in TOI’s Thursday report, whose concrete layers had begun to “peel off” and where curing at many sections was not done as per the specifications. “A detailed audit, including by experts from IIT-Bombay and VJTI, should be carried out on 40% of concretised road patches at random. Any lapses in quality control, vigilance processes and the contractor’s work should be investigated.”
Complaints about poor works are growing, with the latest about a CC road laid a month ago between Rajendra Kumar Chowk and Pali Market in Bandra. Pali Hill Residents Association secretary Madhu Poplai said the surface is breaking down in chunks, and that the road was not properly cured.
In Andheri’s Lokhandwala, following residents’ complaints that the top layer of Back Road has broken down, civic officials reached out to them on Friday to look into rectifying the issue.
Meanwhile, an IIT-B team inspected ongoing CC road works at Dahisar early on Friday. For many road repairs whose work orders were issued this year, IIT-B has been appointed as a third-party auditor by BMC. The team examined cement concrete cubes, receipts from ready mix concrete units, and batch reports. Additionally, concrete temperature and slump tests, and flexural beam sample casting were conducted. The team offered suggestions for better quality control in the next phase of CC road works.
Mumbai: Within hours of TOI’s second report on cement concrete (CC) roads in various parts of the city developing cracks in just months of being laid, city BJP chief and Bandra West MLA Ashish Shelar on Friday met BMC chief Bhushan Gagrani demanding that a special investigation team be set up to look into the works’ quality.
TOI had on Thursday and Friday flagged crumbling new CC roads in Santacruz, Bandra West, Powai and Andheri’s Lokhandwala.
In a letter submitted to Gagrani, Shelar said he had got several complaints from citizens over poor quality of CC road works, and referred to his visit to Santacruz’s Bhargav Road, which was highlighted in TOI’s Thursday report, whose concrete layers had begun to “peel off” and where curing at many sections was not done as per the specifications. “A detailed audit, including by experts from IIT-Bombay and VJTI, should be carried out on 40% of concretised road patches at random. Any lapses in quality control, vigilance processes and the contractor’s work should be investigated.”
Complaints about poor works are growing, with the latest about a CC road laid a month ago between Rajendra Kumar Chowk and Pali Market in Bandra. Pali Hill Residents Association secretary Madhu Poplai said the surface is breaking down in chunks, and that the road was not properly cured.
In Andheri’s Lokhandwala, following residents’ complaints that the top layer of Back Road has broken down, civic officials reached out to them on Friday to look into rectifying the issue.
Meanwhile, an IIT-B team inspected ongoing CC road works at Dahisar early on Friday. For many road repairs whose work orders were issued this year, IIT-B has been appointed as a third-party auditor by BMC. The team examined cement concrete cubes, receipts from ready mix concrete units, and batch reports. Additionally, concrete temperature and slump tests, and flexural beam sample casting were conducted. The team offered suggestions for better quality control in the next phase of CC road works.