Srinagar: The collapse of a section of Boulevard road near Dal Gate has resulted in frequent traffic congestion at the spot, while officials say that the repair may only begin later this week.
The spot is a main conflux of traffic from several city areas and the road also leads to the Mugal Gardens. Last week on Wednesday, 20 meters of its embankment collapsed, forcing authorities to erect a barricade that has narrowed the already cramped section of road.
The authorities have, thus, created a bottleneck for the traffic, and seem unmoved to undertake the repair which they should have taken up at the earliest.
The road’s width has been reduced to half from 30 feet to 15 feet. Officials say that they are not slow on the repairing process but have floated tenders and the work will begin this week.
Showkat Jeelani, the Chief Engineer of Roads and Buildings Department (R&B), said that the tender for repair work has been floated at an estimated cost of Rs 40 lakh. In the upcoming 3 or 4 days the work will be started, he said.
“It takes a little bit of time because this time we will reconstruct it permanently from the bottom, so that in future such a thing will not happen again,” Geelani said. “The reason for the road is collapsing is water logging through the gaps, and also the recent earthquake which cracked open the road. Now it has collapsed. The research team is on the job to see the condition of the entire Boulevard road and in coming days they will submit the report.”
Locals said that the stretch was already weak as it had developed fissures even before the earthquake but the R&B had not bothered to look into the causes.
“Three years ago the road developed cracks, not recently. The authorities temporarily reconstructed it then. They didn’t take any serious action in this matter. The portion of the road collapsed on Wednesday but the authorities knew about it many days ago. They saw that the road was cracked badly and they had sealed some of the portion there, but didn’t take any further action,” said a shopkeeper, Firdous Ahmad.
Locals said that it was a narrow escape for the pedestrians and commuters when the road collapsed. Thankfully, there was no loss of life or injury. It happened in the afternoon at about 3pm. A scooty that was parked on the road fell into the Dal Lake.
Geelani said that this time the repair will be done on scientific lies to erect an embankment that could stand for a very long period of time.

NAVEED AHMAD NAAJAR