The Ramanagara district of Karnataka had heavy rainfall on Friday night, which flooded the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway. The 118 km long Bengaluru-Mysuru highway, which cut the travel time from three hours to roughly 75 minutes, was officially opened by PM Modi on March 12.

The 8,480 crore expressway was flooded close to Bengaluru’s neighbouring Ramanagara district. A series of bumper-to-bumper collisions caused by the standing water in the underbridge on the highway caused slow-moving cars and protracted periods of traffic congestion.

A video posted by Y Sathish Reddy, a member of the BRS party, on Friday shows a significant amount of water gushing onto the road. Vehicles were seen moving slowly on the road in the videos because of the flooding.

#Bengaluru

Light rainfall which happened overnight on #BengaluruMysuruExpressway has resulted in flooding near Ramanagara on Saturday (18-3-23).

The expressway was inaugurated last week by PM Modi

Few days back there were reports of bad roads on the newly built expressway. pic.twitter.com/eYJ7B5Wu7l
— Kamran (@CitizenKamran) March 18, 2023

Several angry passengers accused the PM and Chief Minister BS Bommai of damaging their cars and questioned if the motorway was ready for its official opening. A driver reported that the waterlogging had caused numerous automobiles’ engines to seize.

Nagaraju, a further irritated commuter who said that his car was involved in the first of the bumper-to-bumper crashes, questioned who would be held accountable for them. If the PM had shown there, they could have solved the waterlogging in ten minutes, he claimed.

Authorities from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) arrived at the highway on Saturday morning and started cleaning out the flooded sections.

The highway, which was still being built, had similar waterlogging during the previous monsoon season.