Bengaluru: Several deaths and a week after CM Siddaramaiah gave the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike 14 days to fill up the hundreds of potholes that dot the city’s roads, the civic body has claimed to have filled up 12,592 of the total 24,661 potholes.The citizens say cold mix used to fill up potholes is already giving way in some areas.

“We are working round the clock to ensure all the potholes are filled within the deadline set by the chief minister. About 400km of roads is under contract, so the responsibility of fixing potholes lies with contractors. If contractors don’t honour the agreement, then we will file criminal cases against them and blacklist them. No such cases have come up as of our review meeting held on Sunday ,” said BBMP commissioner N Manjunath Prasad.

According to data made available by the BBMP, 4,850 new potholes have been identified in the past one week, and 1,441 on major roads. The city’s south and east zones, which have received a large proportion of the rain over the past several weeks, were the most affected with 4,705 and 3,731 potholes, respectively. Of them, 3,570 and 1,034 have been attended to. In the past week, some 1,069 potholes were identified in the east zone.

The corporation has been using cold mix, instead of hot mix, to fill up the potholes in areas receiving more rainfall. The cold mix has a lifetime of 2-3 months; citizens said the patch-up is already giving way in some areas. “There was a pothole on the side of the road in NGEF Layout, Sanjaynagar, which the BBMP filled up on Thursday or Friday. When I took this road on Monday , the pothole had reappeared. It seems as if rocks had just been poured into the crater. In other areas too, potholes have resurfaced following rain,” said Mahesh Raj, a resident of the area.

Odette Katrak, an activist and a resident of Bellandur, said: “I’ve seen the authorities filling up potholes with wet mud near the Silk Board junction. If it rains, this mixture gets slushy and makes things worse.”