Mumbai, Aug 29: There are about 27,363 potholes in Mumbai that is way beyond the target mark to get the city into record books, according to a citizens' group. The group, headed by Navin Lade, general secretary of the employment wing of the Republican Party of India, aimed to identify at least 2000 potholes in Mumbai. Lade, on behalf of Mumbaikars, also applied to Guinness World records and Limca Book of Record for having the maximum number of potholes on the roads.

Lade, who spent Rs 4 lakh on the initiative, asked residents of Mumbai to spot potholes and informed him. He formed a team which took photographs of those potholes and uploaded them on a central database. “It took our team 38 days to count and record all these potholes. We set out to find just 20,000 and ended up finding so many more. This exposes the sad reality of Mumbai’s crumbling infrastructure,” Lade was quoted as saying. The group identified 27,363 potholes in Mumbai in 38 days.

While the Guinness Book of World Records rejected Lade's application calling it a political issue, the India Book of Records and Golden Book of Records accepted his entry and currently verifying the claims. Recently, Maharashtra PWD Minister Chandrakant Patil was slammed for changing the deadline for fixing potholes on Mumbai roads and other parts of the state for the third time in three years.

Patil had promised to fix Mumbai roads by December 15, 2016 and had said that whoever sends him a picture of a pothole on the road will get Rs 1,000 from him. With that deadline not met, he promised the same in 2017 sans the Rs 1,000 promise.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 29, 2018 10:37 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).