Bombay High Court to assign the issue of potholes on roads to special bench

The Bombay High Court will assign to a special bench to hear the case raising grievance about potholes on roads in Maharashtra..A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice MS Karnik was approached by a lawyer, advocate Manoj Shirsat, in the capacity of the officer of court, seeking urgent hearing on the issue.The lawyer pleaded that there had been loss of lives and property due to the potholes on roads and not repairing roads was in violation of the fundamental rights of the citizens.The Bench then told the lawyer to submit information/ data that he wants the Court to consider and also indicated that a special bench will be constituted to consider this issue..The issue arose in 2013, when the then Chief Justice Mohit Shah had taken cognizance of a letter written by Justice Gautam Patel and instituted suo motu proceedings on the issue.The letter pointed out that several accidents that were taking place because of the bad conditions of roads in Mumbai and neighbouring districts.The scope of the PIL was expanded later to include the entire State of Maharashtra..In 2018, Bench of Justices AS Oka and PN Deshmukh had passed a detailed judgment after taking into consideration suggestions from lawyers and other intervenors. .After a year, another Mumbai lawyer Ruju Thakker approached the High Court alleging that that the civic authorities had failed to implement the high court orders of February and April 2018.The High Court had earlier this year pulled up civic bodies, over non-repair and non-filling of potholes. However, the matter was not been listed after that. In light of this, the matter was mentioned today by Shirsat..Update: The story earlier mentioned that a special bench will be constituted. A bench will be assigned. The error is regretted.