Panchkula: If you file a complaint about a pothole or damaged road on the Mhari Sadak app, do not be surprised by the response you receive.Instead of uploading photographs showing the pothole filled or the road repaired, officials are allegedly responding with pictures of damaged roads and using identical remarks to close complaints without resolving the issues.“The road requires recarpeting, whose work will commence soon. However, regular patchwork is being done to make the road motorable. The complaint is duplicate (there are) numerous duplicate complaints of the same location.” This is the standard response complainants have been receiving, even when the reported defects remain unresolved. At least 10 complaints were found to have received this message, with no resolution even after a month.The practice raises questions about the implementation of the commitments made by Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini when he launched the statewide app in Oct last year. The CM had said, “Once complaints are registered, road repair or strengthening work will be initiated immediately by the concerned department, with time-bound monitoring to ensure accountability.” However, complainants alleged that neither had the promised work begun nor had they been given a timeline for its completion.Residents said complaints about potholes and damaged roads in different parts of Panchkula had been marked as closed on the Mhari Sadak app without verifiable evidence of repairs at the reported locations. This has raised concerns over the municipal corporation’s handling of public grievances.The complainants also alleged that the closure remarks were contradictory, as they acknowledged the need for recarpeting while treating the complaints as resolved or duplicated. According to them, the complaints concerned different roads and locations, with aerial distances recorded in the app ranging from 12.13 metres to 66.05 metres.“I made a few complaints about different locations in Sector 20. I got the same reply for all, and the issues remained unresolved even after a month. Why have they uploaded photographs to support the closures when the pictures showed cracks, depressions and potholes? Several photographs uploaded by officials showed only broad views of streets or surrounding areas rather than close-up evidence of completed repairs,” said Anik Gupta, a student and a resident of Sector 15.Another complainant, Mohit Gupta, founder of Solution Box, said, “Closing complaints on the basis of work promised for the future defeats the purpose of grievance tracking and weakens accountability. Identical remarks, including the same spelling errors, across all 10 cases also raised doubts about whether each complaint had been assessed individually.”“We seek reopening of all such complaints and individual inspections of the reported locations. We also call for time-stamped, geo-tagged close-up photographs showing the defects and completed repairs, along with work orders and schedules for roads awaiting recarpeting,” he added.MC commissioner Vinay Kumar did not respond to a request for comment.
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