AMC said 6,574 of the 8,706 potholes have been repaired. AMC said 6,574 of the 8,706 potholes have been repaired. After the arrival of monsoon in June, till September 4, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corpora-tion (AMC) had repaired only 6 per cent of the total roads damaged in the city. However, from September 5-12, the civic body repaired 15.4 per cent of the roads damaged due to rains — nearly three-fold of the work done in earlier three months — to ready the city to host the India-Japan Annual Summit, which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe on September 13-14. According to data of road works , accessed by The Indian Express, the AMC achieved a target of 20 km within a week, vis-a-vis just 7.79 km of road repair work done in the period before that since monsoon set in. On Tuesday, when the Gujarat High Court was hearing a petition on the condition of roads in the city, the AMC sought time till September 25 to file a compliance report and a proposal with a roadmap for resurfacing of roads. As per a survey conducted by the AMC, 130 km of road was damaged this monsoon. An internal note on the repair work stated 30,000 metric tonne of “heavy patchwork was required on other roads”. The cost calculated was Rs 3,200-3,300 per metric tonne. Out of 130 km of damaged road, beginning this monsoon till September 4, 2017, a total length of 7,796 m (7.79 km) was repaired and resurfaced. While from September 5 -12 , 20,018 m (20 km) road was repaired. The concentration of the repair work was focussed on the routes taken by Abe, his wife Akie and Modi during the two-day visit. For instance, the road from Airport towards Ashram Road, Sabarmati Riverfront and Vastra-pur was repaired on a war footing overnight as compared to the ones not on the roadshow route. On August 10, in an affidavit filed in the HC, the AMC had said that due to unprecedented rainfall, there was breakdown in underground utilities services, roads, and other infrastructure. It also quoted a survey as reporting “8,706 potholes” of which the civic body claimed 6,574 were repaired. “Ahmedabad city is having 2,600 km of road network out of which approximate 202 km roads are damaged due to heavy rain, out of which 18 km of roads are under defect liability period, for which the concerned contractors were issued notices to attend the same at the earliest,” the AMC affidavit stated, adding that it had issued 55 notices between July 4 and July 31 to 10 contractors. On September 12, CM Vijay Rupani set a deadline of October 20 for all eight municipal corporations of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Surat, Bhavnagar, Gandhinagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar for the completion of road repair work. Rupani and his deputy Nitin Patel in a video conference with all municipal commissioners, mayors and standing committee chairpersons had directed them to complete the repair work before Diwali, and also issued orders for against those officials who showed negligence. Asked about the speedy repairs ahead of the Abe-Modi visit, Ahmedabad Municipal Commiss-ioner Mukesh Kumar told The Indian Express, “Definitely when such a high-level delegation is visiting the city, we want the roads to be in a good condition. The focus was on the roads enroute the delegation’s visit, but other roads were repaired too.” For all the latest Cities News, download Indian Express App

Stay updated with all the Ahmedabad Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.