Mumbai Mayor orders inspection of Mumbai bridges

Mumbai Mayor Snehal Ambekar has finally woken up to the Mahad tragedy, which claimed about 20 lives on Wednesday. Following the collapse of the bridge on the Mumbai-Goa highway, the mayor wrote a letter to municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta to undertake an audit of all the bridges in Mumbai and carry out repair work wherever necessary with immediate effect. She also asked the administration to submit a detailed plan of action in this regard.

The mayor’s letter, which was sent on Friday, said: “If any mishap is to happen in Mumbai, the entire blame for the accident will be placed on the administration. Therefore, it must undertake the evaluation and repair of all flyovers, rail over-bridges (ROBs) and foot over-bridges (FOBs) in the city immediately.”

Additional municipal commissioner Sanjay Deshmukh said, “The proposal to appoint consultants to inspect all of Mumbai’s bridges and create an inventory of those that need repair will be tabled before the standing committee in the next 15 days. Following this, work will start immediately.”

Mr Deshmukh confirmed that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had decided to conduct audits of all bridges in the city in December 2015. Tenders for this purpose were floated in March 2016. The administration now requires the permission of the standing committee to start work in this regard.

There are a total of 314 bridges in the city, including flyovers, ROBs, FOBs, and FOBs of the railways. The BMC has data on 237 of these. The other 77 bridges fall within railways land, and the BMC is in the process of collecting information on the same from the railway authorities.

There are about 23 bridges in the city at present that have been constructed during the British era, suggesting that they definitely need repair.