Sector 79 School Road Potholes Raise Safety Alarm

GURUGRAM: A badly damaged 24-metre road near a school in Sector 79 has become the subject of an escalated civic complaint, with residents warning that rain-filled potholes pose a serious risk to buses and other vehicles used by thousands of students.

Residents have approached the Prime Minister's Office after saying that repeated representations to local agencies did not produce a durable repair. The stretch is used by more than 10,000 people a day, including over 3,000 schoolchildren, according to the complaint.

The concern is not that a school-bus accident has already occurred. It is that the road's condition creates the possibility of one, particularly during heavy rain when muddy water hides the depth and edges of potholes. A bus driver may see a continuous flooded surface where the underlying carriageway is broken and uneven.

Large vehicles face a different risk from cars on such a road. Their higher weight can deepen damaged patches, while sudden steering to avoid a crater may bring the vehicle close to pedestrians, two-wheelers or oncoming traffic. Repeated braking and tilting are also unsettling for children standing or seated inside.

The residents' grievance seeks intervention for reconstruction and maintenance, not a temporary filling exercise that washes away in the next spell. During the monsoon, loose repair material can quickly become slurry if the pothole contains standing water and the base has already failed. A lasting fix requires drainage, a stable sub-base and a surface laid under suitable conditions.

Responsibility should be settled quickly between the district administration, Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority and Municipal Corporation of Manesar. Commuters are not helped by knowing that a road lies near an agency boundary; they need one authority to coordinate barricading, pumping, patching and eventual reconstruction.

Until permanent work begins, the immediate safety measures are basic but urgent. Deep sections should be marked with reflective barricades, traffic movement should be channelled away from the weakest edge and water should be removed before an inspection. School-bus operators can be alerted to reduce speed and avoid simultaneous two-way movement through the narrowest damaged portion.

Sector 79 sits in a rapidly built-up part of New Gurugram where residential occupancy and school traffic have grown faster than some local roads. That growth makes preventive maintenance more important, not less. Waiting for a crash before repairing a known route would turn a documented warning into an avoidable failure.

The PMO complaint now gives the issue a formal trail. The meaningful response will be visible on the ground: a safe interim route, a technically sound restoration plan and an accountable timeline communicated to the families who use the stretch every morning.