Hey Palike, where art thou? B’luru cops are doing BBMP’s job

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: As the civic agencies in the city are busy playing the blame game over the existence of potholes and dug-up roads, the KR Puram traffic police are earning praises for temporarily restoring a dug-up road, to ensure smooth traffic flow in the city.

As the residents of KR Puram started for offices and schools on the drizzling Thursday morning, they experienced a major inconvenience due to a dug-up road that turned into a slush track, courtesy of incessant rains.

The traffic police, having a hard time manning the congestion, took to their Twitter handle and posted a picture of the pit and tagged the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Chief Commissioner Tushar Girinath requesting help from the civic agency.

“Nobody from BBMP responding to our call. Pls send someone to close this pit sir,” they tweeted. However, when there was no response from the BBMP, the cops took upon themselves the responsibility of restoring the road, at least for a temporary period, by filling the dug-up pit using mud. “Somehow we have managed to close the pit temporarily by filling it with mud.

It requires some concrete to fix the pit completely and permanently,” the KR Puram traffic police tweeter later. This job earned a lot of appreciation from the motorists as well as the netizens who blamed the BBMP for turning into a mute spectator over the issue while the cops did the needful.

One of the netizens tagging the Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai along with the BBMP and the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) tweeted, “Dear CMshame on you guys! Even city traffic police have to beg BBMP to respond to citizen-centric issues.”

“Dear PMO - please make Bengaluru a union territory! So that we get monitored by PMO directly. Our Karnataka politicians are too honest,” read another tweet. Later, even the Karnataka Congress party shared the post and tweeted that the Chief Minister of Karnataka has failed in maintaining urban development. However, this is not the first time that the BTP has earned respect for doing civic works.