Lawyers to file PIL against BMC and AirTel

City lawyers will file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL)
in the court against the indiscriminate digging going on all around the city
with the connivance of Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) and private telecom
services provider, AirTel. Mukesh Rai, Advocate and BJP corporator and advocates
Pramod Saxena, Girish Srivastava, Anil Shrivastava and Mahesh Sharma said that
everyone knew the bad condition of main and link roads and by lanes.

Rai alleged that due to the inefficiency and connivance
of senior BMC officials, AirTel was bent upon digging up the whole city. “The
Bharti Telenet (AirTel) is favored by the BMC officials and it is clearly
violating the terms and conditions. BMC is also not taking any action despite
numerous complaints lodged with it against AirTel,” he said.

On top of it, the assembly was misguided when a question
was raised over the issue. This further proved that BMC officials and AirTel
have got together for mutual gain, he said. Quoting the state government’s
policy, Rai said the agency undertaking the digging work was also responsible
for conducting repair work after the digging is over.

However, BMC reverted the rule and signed an agreement
with AirTel. According to the agreement, AirTel deposited Rs 57,20,984 with BMC,
which took the responsibility for repairing the roads. He said according to the
agreement signed in August last, the repair work should have been completed
within 10 days of the digging work. However, several roads have not been
repaired even after a lapse of 140 days. As a result, accidents are taking place
everyday and residents are subject to several inconveniences, he said.

He alleged that AirTel was constantly violating the
contract by neither placing caution boards at neither the digging sites nor
mentioning the duration of the task. Due to the hue and cry raised by residents
of several areas, the contractors have started digging the roads by night.