Mumbai, Dec. 2 -- Repeated concretisation of roads in the western suburbs, including stretches concreted recently, is adding to air pollution and worsening the Air Quality Index in several pockets of the city, residents told HT. The lack of planning is not only impacting public health but also leading to loss of public resources, the residents said. In Chandivali, for instance, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has taken up concretisation of a 200-metre DP (development plan) road between Sangharsh Nagar and Nahar, which was concretised recently, alleged Mandeep Singh Makkar, founder, Chandivali Citizens Welfare Association. Makkar said that when he asked workers on site about the duplication, he was told that a developer who has a project in from the area had concretised the road earlier to claim benefits. "The workers said the contractor had forgotten to lay drainage lines. So the BMC is concretising the road again using public funds," he said. "Duplication of work is not only adding to air and noise pollution in the locality but also causing inconvenience to residents." Sudesh Gawli, executive engineer with BMC's roads department, also said the road was not concretised by the civic body earlier. "The proposal to concretise the road was approved earlier, but we were waiting for a no objection certificate, which we received only recently. Accordingly, we have started work now," Gawli said. A similar scenario plays out at sector two in Charkop, where both sides of the recently concretised Charkop police station road are dug up. High tension electricity cables will be laid along one side of the road while on the other side, near the Milan Sweets junction, the hydraulic department has dug up a pit to identify a cavity on a water pipeline, residents said. "The Charkop police station road was concreted last year. But yet again, both sides of the road have been dug up for over a month," said Mili Shetty, chief co-ordinator of the Charkop Sector 8 Vikas Samiti. Assistant municipal commissioner (R-S ward) Aarti Golekar said one side of the road was dug up for nearly a month as they were trying to identify a cavity in the water mains. "We had to empty the water pipeline to detect the cavity. We have identified the problem area now and even let water into the pipeline to check it," Golekar said. The pit would be closed soon once work was completed, he noted. A proposal to concretise the entire junction area is pending and once that is taken up, all utilities would be ducted together, Golekar added. "That should prevent the road from being dug up again and again," he said. Along similar lines, in Kandivli's Lokhandwala Township, cemented roads have been dug up in phases to augment sewerage capacity. Santy Shetty, founder of the residents' group We All Connect (WAC), said that though the roads in front of his building were concreted in July, they had been dug up to install barricades along the footpaths. "Shouldn't the barricades have been put up at the time of road concretisation to spare us from this ordeal," Shetty said. Trivankumar Karnani, founder of the Mumbai North Central District Forum (MNCDF), alleged that nexus between bureaucrats and officials was behind the repeated concretisation of roads. "This is nothing but waste of public money," he said....