Bengaluru: A year after a group of techies took to the streets to fill potholes on a bad stretch in Gunjur, next to the city’s tech corridor, residents were back on the roads on Independence Day, warning authorities that more than 1,000 voters could abstain from voting if road infrastructure is not improved.TOI had reported last year how techies stepped in to fill potholes after repeated complaints over the poor condition of the road.Carrying the tricolour and raising the slogan “no road, no vote”, residents across age groups marched along the stretch, demanding better roads, footpaths and drainage. They urged Bengaluru development minister Krishna Byre Gowda to address their long-pending civic problems.“While we thank the minister for his initiative on footpaths, we don’t even have proper roads, let alone footpaths. This is also Bengaluru and we pay a lot of taxes. We request you to do something about this,” a resident said.Harsh Kumar, who mobilised residents for last year’s pothole-filling drive on Gunjur Club Road, said one of the area’s main roads had also been narrowed. “This road used to be 30ft wide. The rajakaluve has reduced its width and residents of Gunjur are struggling because of the narrow road. The existing road is difficult even for tractors to ply as it has become a muddy stretch,” he said.Residents said the road connects Gunjur with Mahadevapura, Marathahalli and other parts of the city, with several schools located nearby. They added that the poor condition of the stretch poses a particular risk to women and children.Residents alleged that the Bengaluru East City Corporation (BECC) commissioner had assured them earlier this year that the road would be repaired before monsoon. However, the stretch remains in poor condition, they said. It also gets flooded during rain, with water failing to drain into the nearby lake. “This has been the state of things for the past three or four years,” another resident said.The protest came exactly a year after more than 25 young working professionals, many of them IT employees, picked up shovels and filled potholes on the Gunjur-Doddakannelli road. Frustrated by repeated complaints and civic inaction, the residents had used gravel dumped by the roadside to patch potholes and craters.
