On Tuesday morning, pedestrians and motorists travelling on Indira Nagar’s 100 feet road in Bengaluru were surprised to find Chief Minister Siddaramaiah “grounded” with his cabinet colleague, Bengaluru Development Minister KJ George giving him company. Overnight, activists of the Navbharat Democratic Party, a little-known outfit, had painted the faces of the two leaders on the road next to the potholes. The intention was to name and shame the two men, who are primarily responsible for providing basic infrastructure in the Karnataka capital.

This move to put Siddaramaiah and George on the mat has come after seven deaths in Bengaluru this extended monsoon season. Potholes have resulted in bikers skidding and being run over by heavy vehicles has become the killer menace in the city. Yet the two leaders have followed a “No pothole killed a Bengalurean” narrative. Siddaramaiah conveniently said the deaths happened due to accidents, not due to potholes, refusing to acknowledge the reality on the ground and asking sarcastically what he could do about the rain.

It is strange that Siddaramaiah has adopted an obstinate approach to complaints from citizens, considering Karnataka is in an election year. The same CM had given a free hand to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the municipal body of the city, last August to retrieve the city’s 2000-odd stormwater drains. A majority of them located along a length of 857 km had been encroached upon, refusing to allow the rainwater reach the lakes and tanks and flooding up different parts of India’s Silicon Valley.

Last year on July 29 when it rained 250mm, the highest in five decades, some 600 homes went under water. Backed by the Karnataka High court, a list of 1,923 constructions was drawn up and orders issued to reduce them to rubble. This year, Siddaramaiah has instead blamed the generosity of the Rain God, pointing out that in the last 60 days, it has rained on 46 days. “The drains and stormwater drains do not have the capacity to withstand so much rainwater,” he said, forgetting that the capacity is vastly reduced because of encroachments.

It is as if both the Congress and the BJP have entered into a tacit agreement not to focus too much on encroachments. The BJP has 100 of the 198 corporators in Bengaluru and all the three MPs from the city are from the saffron party. Both parties know that any move to demolish properties will anger citizens and that will manifest itself in the May 2018 elections. Which is why the focus is on the potholes, which is more a symptom of the problem than the problem itself.

“There seems to be a quiet consensus, not to disturb status quo, look the other way,” says Sugata Raju, political analyst. “The opposition does not want to shout too much about encroachments because in case the CM orders demolitions like last year, the BJP leaders in the city will also have to do their bit of explaining to the people.”

Add to that, the politician-builder nexus that makes demolition a dreaded word because no neta can risk the tap of donations drying up with elections seven months away. A majority of the corporators, close to 50 per cent, have a real estate background.

But the 15,935 potholes, officially, give Bengaluru a bad name. The unofficial count is twice that figure. The test is whether the BBMP officials will fill up the potholes within the 15-day deadline the CM has set for them, even cancelling the Diwali and Sunday leave of the Bengaluru municipality employees. A couple of contractors who had worked on the road have been blacklisted and barred from getting contracts in the future but it is obvious that Bengaluru that needs a focused approach is being treated with quackery, with short-term solutions to tide over the immediate crisis. The real test will be whether the patchwork will survive the next drizzle.

Across the border, a civil society initiative by Aditya Reddy, the grandson of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister, the late Marri Chenna Reddy, tried to shame the Hyderabad administration by running what he called a “Potography” contest where Hyderabadis were invited to send in photographs of potholes. In less than a month, Aditya received 400-plus entries with over 1,000 photographs. The estimate is that Hyderabad runs Bengaluru close in terms of these craters, with some 12,000 of them, prompting people to rechristen the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation as the Crater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

The response of the administration in Telangana is Bengaluru Ctrl C, Ctrl V. Municipal Administration Minister KT Rama Rao tweeted how Hyderabad had received 500 per cent more rain. The figure was way off the mark as the city had received only 9 per cent more rain (704 mm instead of the usual 643.5 mm between June 1 and September 30) and that was enough to reduce Hyderabad to a lunar surface.

Hyderabad’s Municipal Commissioner Janardhan Reddy blames the rainfall as well. “Our drains can take only 2 cm of rain per hour. But some areas have received 6 cm, even 20 cm in an hour,” he says.

The worst affected part is the city’s IT area – hi-tech only in name – whose roads are reduced to stones and gravel. Cyberabad with its glass facade buildings struggling to cope with flooded basements is testimony to unplanned growth that encroached upon dried up lakebeds at the time of development. And like Bengaluru, there are more holes than bitumen on the roads.

With copyright credit to Vijay Mallya, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are two cities, divided by 550 km but united by potholes.