In July, 2015, 16-year-old Prakash Bilhore went to fill out a college admission form in Bhandup. But he never made it home. The motorcycle he was travelling on hit a pothole, throwing him off. He died in hospital within an hour.

That pothole had been dug by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to fix a power cable. It was supposed to be filled by May but had remained open. It was finally filled after Prakash’s death, claimed his family.

Months later, his father Dadarao Bilhore embarked on a personal crusade to fix the city’s roads. Today, the former grocery shop owner from Marol in Andheri (East) is known as ‘Pothole Dada’, claiming to have fixed “1,500 roads” through his NGO Prakash Foundation. Years later, as the BMC heads to the polls on January 15, he is reiterating the same demand that drove him to action: pothole-free roads that don’t kill people.

It’s a reminder of a defining failure of India’s richest municipal corporation, which has an annual budget exceeding Rs 70,000 crore, larger than several state governments. 

Despite spending Rs 400 crore on filling potholes in 2023 and Rs 275 crore in 2024, the craters continue to exist. According to reports citing BMC’s data, Mumbai recorded over 59,000 potholes in 2023. Earlier in 2022, 38,310 potholes were reported while in 2021, 43,478 potholes were reported. 

While figures specific to Mumbai are not available on year-wise basis, activists claim there has been a rise. This comes as deaths due to pothole-related accidents are seeing a spike across the country. According to the Union ministry of road transport and highways, potholes killed 1,481 people in 2021, 1,856 in 2022, 2,161 in 2023.     

As civic body elections return to the city after an eight-year gap, potholes have emerged as a potent political issue, exposing the gap between the BMC’s massive resources and its chronic mismanagement.

Political blame game

The last BMC elections were held in 2017. Although the elected body’s term ended in 2022, elections were delayed by three years. During this interim period, the Maharashtra government has overseen civic affairs and promised to repair Mumbai’s roads within two-and-a-half years.

Under a plan laid out by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in 2022, 2,121 roads covering around 700 km were to be concretised by 2025. That work remains unfinished and is now expected to take at least two more years. The Bombay High Court too had intervened in 2022, following which the then BMC commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal ordered that all potholes be filled.

The BMC’s budget tells its own story. As per the corporation’s budget for 2025-26, it has allocated Rs 5,100 crore for roads and traffic. This year alone, Rs 154 crore was spent on filling potholes just during the monsoon. Yet the former chairman of the BMC’s standing committee, Rahul Shivale, told Frontline in April 2025: “The BMC used to spend Rs 800 crore every year to repair potholes. So, it decided to overcome these issues by concretising the roads.”

But Dadarao Bilhole insisted accidents caused by potholes “continue to happen”. “Covering all the potholes of the city is a very strenuous task. As residents, we can only do so much – the BMC needs to step up its efforts…I am not saying that nothing is being done, but there is still a lot to do.”

The Congress has released a “chargesheet” against the BMC. Sachin Sawant, Mumbai-based Congress leader and AICC secretary, said: “People have been dying on Mumbai’s roads because of potholes and patchwork repairs. The deadlines to make Mumbai pothole-free through concretisation have already been missed. There is large-scale corruption in the BMC. Wherever you go in Mumbai, you will find potholes. This is a serious issue because it is the common people who have suffered the most.”

BJP leader and Kandivli MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar defended the government’s efforts. “When the BMC was under (now Shiv Sena-UBT chief) Uddhav Thackeray’s rule, barely 50 km of cement concrete roads were constructed annually. We are working on this issue on a war footing, and the work will be completed within the next four to five years. It is no longer such a major issue.”

“We have also changed tender conditions to prevent subletting of contracts. A utility corridor has been mandated to prevent roads from being repeatedly dug up for gas, power, internet, and other services. Repeated digging was a major cause of potholes and patchy roads.”

Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Harshal Pradhan shot back: “Before making such allegations, they should look at themselves. In the name of concretisation, they are doing corruption. They have given contracts in advance, and still, the work is not over. The entire city is being dug up, and people are suffering.”

The deadly cycle

Nizam Hussain, 37, knows that potholes aren’t just numbers. In August 2022, his brother Nair and sister-in-law Mantasha were returning home to Andheri from Borivali when their motorcycle hit a pothole on a Borivali flyover, Hussain said. They fell and were run over by a truck. Their son Hasnain was just four years old.

“The accident happened through no fault of theirs. If there had been no pothole on that road that day, they would never have met this fate,” Hussain told Newslaundry. 

In July 2025, 55-year-old Lalu Kamble reportedly died while riding his scooter after he lost balance due to a pothole on the Juhu-Vikhroli Link Road in Powai and was run over by a dumper. In October 2025, 19-year-old Raj Singh reportedly died in Bhiwandi’s Temghar area when his motorcycle hit potholes and he was run over by a truck.

Trivankumar Karnani, a lawyer and founder of the Mumbai North Central District Forum, a citizen welfare group, said: “There is absolute mismanagement in the civic administration…There is zero coordination between departments during road concretisation works.”

Explaining why the city can’t fix its potholes, Karnani said: “In Mumbai today, a road is concretised, and within 15 days it is dug up by one agency to lay gas pipelines. Thirty days later, another agency digs it up again for power lines or fibre optics. This repeated digging is a criminal waste of public money, posing serious safety risks…Claims by politicians that road concretisation has resolved Mumbai's pothole problem are completely false and a gross misrepresentation of the truth.”

Karnani’s forum has released a 30-point citizens’ charter highlighting civic issues. “Municipal corporators must initiate criminal action against contractors for substandard work. Elected corporators should convene joint meetings with citizen forums and resident welfare associations before any road concretisation project, along with the Roads Department and allied departments such as hydraulics, water, gardens, and agencies involved in power supply, gas pipelines and telecom services, to avoid repeated digging.”

To ask about the corporation’s inability to fix the problem and why official data doesn’t match the number of pothole-related deaths claimed by locals, Newslaundry reached out to BMC commissioner Bhushan Gagrani for comment. This report will be updated if a response is received.

‘Real reason isn’t the monsoon’

The problem reportedly extends across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Petitions in court, media reports and citizen testimonies repeatedly allege crumbling roads as a factor behind accidents in municipal corporations that include BMC, Thane Municipal Corporation, Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation, Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Corporation, Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation, Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation and Mira-Bhayander Municipal Corporation.

Thane’s Ghodbunder Road has become notorious. Between January and October 2025, 18 people allegedly died because of pothole-related incidents on this road, as per petitions and locals quoted in media reports.

Mushtaq Ansari, a Mahim resident and founder of Pothole Warriors, a group that fills potholes across the MMR, alleged: “The Thane-Ghodbunder Road has come to be known as a killer road. More than 100 people have lost their lives there in the last four years. Every year, the road is resurfaced using poor-quality tar, which gets washed away during the monsoon.”

Vivek Bangale, a stock market analyst based in Juhu, said: “Every monsoon, roads in many parts of Mumbai turn into craters. Each year, authorities blame heavy rainfall for the damage. But the real reason is not the monsoon – it is the awarding of road contracts to incompetent contractors. Hopefully, whoever wins the BMC elections this time will finally resolve the issue of poor quality roads.”

Ruju Thakkar, a Mumbai-based high court lawyer who is an intervenor in a suo-motu PIL filed on potholes in 2015, said: “I believe good quality roads are a fundamental right guaranteed to us under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. This has been time and again reiterated by the Supreme Court as well as our Bombay High Court.”

“Recently, in October 2025, the Bombay High Court has said that if anyone dies because of bad roads, including an open manhole, Rs 6 lakh must be paid to the victim’s family within 6 weeks by the concerned municipal corporation. For an injury, compensation ranges from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh, depending on its severity. This amount is over and above any claim raised elsewhere. Such judicial orders are passed because the executive isn’t doing its job correctly."

As Mumbai prepares to vote on January 15, Bilhore, who has spent a decade filling potholes with his own hands, has a simple message for whoever takes charge of the BMC. Pothole-free roads are a critical issue, he said, “because it is common people like us who pay the price for bad roads”.

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