Sir,

When I moved into Jayalakshmipuram some 18 years back, I noticed that the Street in front of my house did not have any name. A detailed study of the area showed that there were several anomalies. Before listing these anomalies, let me reiterate what I believe should be a logical method of naming of the City Streets:

1. If East-West Streets are designated as “Main Street” (Mukhya Raste) then North-South Streets would be “Cross Street” (Adda Raste) or vice versa.
2. Under no circumstances a Main Street can be perpendicular to another Main Street and similarly no Cross Street should be perpendicular to another Cross Street.
3. The Street number should increase in the same direction. Also, if there is a short Street, it could be designated with a subscript of ‘A’.
4. If a particular street has an established name, retain that name with the logical street number in brackets [example, BSNL (6th Mukhya) Raste, etc.]

Armed with these basic ideas and a detailed map of the locality, I approached the Corporation Commissioner as well as the Ward Corporator but I got a standard reply that there was no budget provision for this activity. After a few attempts, I was told that though the budget was sanctioned there were no bidders for the tender!

More than a decade passed and I tried once again to contact the new Corporator in 2014. After several attempts, her mobile was answered by her husband who told me that his wife was a housewife but he in fact took care of the Corporator’s duties!

Anyway, coming back to the issue of naming of the Streets, I did have three meetings with the husband along with the area engineer and both seemed to agree to all my suggestions. Finally in February 2018, the new boards with street names have appeared but sadly with several mistakes.

How can a single straight Street of 500 meters in length have two different names, one on its Western end and another on its Eastern end? The attached photos show the freshly installed name boards on two ends of that Street. Unfortunately both are incorrect and the traditional and logical name should have been “Mahajana High School (2nd Main) Raste”. Similar inconsistency can be noticed in another Main Street also. In addition, many short streets have no name boards and several damaged old boards have not been removed adding to the confusion. There are instances of a Cross Street perpendicular to another Cross Street. Could the Corporator and the area engineer kindly look into these anomalies and make the necessary corrections?

– U.B. Acharya, Jayalakshmipuram, 25.2.2018

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