The Bengaluru civic body has fixed the potholes on which street artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy "moonwalked" dressed as an astronaut to highlight the pathetic condition of roads in India's tech hub.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has said that the potholes on Tunganagar main road in the northwest suburb have been filled with mud, bitumen and asphalted by late afternoon, responding at the earliest to the artist's complaint through social media (Twitter).
Reacting to the civic body's proactive action, the 40-year-old artist-cum-activist thanked people for flagging the complaint by sharing and retweeting the minute-long video clip on Twitter.
"Thank you, people, for such an overwhelming response and support. Work in progress. Quick and prompt response from @BBMP. Thank you very much @BBMPCOMM @BBMP-MAYOR and Mr Prabhakar, CE, RR Nagar who is overlooking on the ground currently," said Nanjundanswamy on his Facebook account with a video clip of an earth-moving machine filling the moon crater-sized potholes with mud and levelling them for asphalting.
The BBMP spokesperson said that the civic body had come to know of road's condition after the artist's video went viral, but couldn't act immediately because the staff was on leave due to Ganesh Chaturthi.
"The concerned engineer (Prabhakar) was alerted about the complaint doing rounds on social media with a video clip of the artist treading cautiously on the potholes in the locality. As Monday was a public holiday for the Ganesh festival, the employees concerned were not available. Hence, we decided to fix the potholes on Tuesday," spokesperson Suresh said.
Nanjundaswamy has used his creative artwork in the past, too, to red-flag the callousness of the civic administration in maintaining roads and other amenities, by displaying dummy mermaids and crocodiles around potholes to draw the BBMP's attention to the city's infrastructure woes.
The video clip became an instant hit in the virtual world, coincidentally, on the day (Monday) when Chandrayaan-2 mission's lander Vikram with rover Pragyan separated from its Orbiter about 100 km above the lunar surface for its soft-landing near the moon's south pole early morning on September 7.
(With inputs from IANS)
