Vikas Nagar road caves in, 2nd incident in four months
The road where the hole in the ground appeared on Sunday is in Sector 8 between Lord Shiv’s statue and the bus stand near Powerhouse Crossing.
A large chunk of a road in Vikas Nagar caved in after rain pounded the city for hours, on Sunday. Earlier this year in March, the locality witnessed a similar situation when a sizeable portion of a road here caved in after heavy rainfall.
The road where the hole in the ground appeared on Sunday is in Sector 8 between Lord Shiv’s statue and the bus stand near Powerhouse Crossing.
This road, maintained by the public works department (PWD), deteriorated due to a previous work carried out under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) by Jal Nigam, an official said.
Fortunately, no accident took place when the incident occurred. “Thank God it was Sunday and the traffic was thin on the stretch,” a local said. Vivek Sharma, a resident, captured the moment on his phone. His video was being widely shared on social media. His X post read: “In Lucknow’s Vikas Nagar Sector 2, the door of Patal Lok opened once again...”
In a statement, PWD said the hole, which was about five metres long, wide and deep, occurred due to continuous water leakage from a trunk sewer line laid below the coated surface of the road by Jal Nigam. The leak gradually weakened the soil beneath the road due to which the road portion collapsed.
Jal Nigam had deployed Suez Company, the agency that laid the pipe, to repair the leakage, it added.
Municipal commissioner Inderjit Singh said last year a similar hole emerged on this very road. Despite it being the responsibility of PWD, the damage caused by poor work done by Jal Nigam necessitated intervention by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation, he added.
“In the interest of public safety, the municipal corporation has temporarily barricaded the affected section and diverted traffic to alternate routes,” he added.
Singh said LMC had promptly notified PWD, Jal Kal and Jal Nigam to expedite repair works on the stretch on a war footing.
Not too long ago In March this year, a road in Vikas Nagar’s Sector 4 caved in following heavy rains, indicating the poor quality of road construction. The road was built by the public works department. In November 2022, a part of the stretch on the Mama Crossing-Gulacheen Mandir route in Vikas Nagar caved in.