Hubballi, February 24: The Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation, in an attempt to reduce the number of accidents, has written to the Police Commissionerate twice, seeking permission to lay new scientific humps on roads.
It is still waiting for a year now, for the assistant commissioners of police of the traffic division to respond to the request.
The HDMC planned to call tenders and give contracts for construction of the humps as per the guidelines of the Indian Road Congress (IRC). Irregular and random construction of speed breakers has been a cause for complaints by residents on the poor quality of work by the HDMC over the years. In order to prevent such complaints, the HDMC wrote to the Commissionerate, as the latter would have a clear idea on the accident zones on the twin city roads. It would also help in marking the exact places where the speed breakers would be needed.
The HDMC has set aside Rs 96.48 lakh for construction of 137 scientific humps in the cities. Separate tenders were called in three divisions of the HDMC and the authorities gave J B Vali the contract for the work in Hubballi North Division of the HDMC. In the Hubballi South Division, they gave the contract to Ravi G Talikoti and in Dharwad Division, they gave V H Jadhav.
Petition for better humps Dr K H Jitoori, a local resident, had filed a petition in the 3rd additional civil court, Hubballi, in 2016, asking for an order to the HDMC to build humps in a scientific manner. The court had given a judgment in 2017 to clear the old, unscientifically constructed humps and build new humps.
As per the court order, the HDMC cleared 192 old humps and called tenders for construction of new humps in 2019.
Of the old, cleared humps, a few were high and not easily visible to vehicle users. Many accidents have taken place at such points as two-wheeler riders lost control over their vehicles while riding on the high humps and fell on the roads. The HDMC has decided to bring an end to this, said Commissioner Dr Suresh Itnala.
