Visuals of damaged footpaths and waterlogging in Bengaluru's Commercial Street surfaced online on Saturday, July 24. The images and video showed that the cobblestones had dislodged in many areas and water was seen gushing out of a pipe from the footpath. This came just a day after Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa’s visit to the street where he commended officials on the work being done as part of the Smart City Project to beautify the area.
An official, speaking to TNM, clarified that the waterlogging was caused as the connection to the drainage hadn’t been completed yet. “The work is not yet completed and we have not claimed to have completed it also. It is still in the final stage of completion,” said Prahalad, Chief Engineer, Smart City, Bengaluru.
“The pipes have still been kept open as some drainage and electrical connections are yet to be completed. The dislodged cobblestones that were in the pictures were places where we are yet to complete the cement finishing,” he further said. And added that the pictures were deliberately where the work was pending to allegedly make them look bad.
“We were to finish the project by July 30, but it has been raining continuously, so it is getting delayed. We will have to work through this and we will complete the work soon,” he added.
Bengaluru’s Commercial Street was selected for beautification in 2019 under the Smart City Project. As a part of this, the street was to be paved with cobblestones to make it more pedestrian-friendly with the intention of increasing footfall to help the businesses there. The work had begun in May of 2020 but it suffered several delays.
On Friday, July 23, CM Yediyurappa visited Commercial Street along with Karnataka’s Revenue Minister R Ashoka and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta to inspect the beautification work. After the inspection, Yediyurappa said that he had also visited other places across the city where similar projects are taking place and all of them including Commercial Street would be completed soon.
Earlier, on July 21, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC) predicted that the BBMP area would witness isolated light to moderate rain. It forecasted that the weather in this area would be “generally cloudy sky with isolated very light to moderate rains” until July 24