Three days after the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) demolished part of an under-construction Eastern Railway building, mayor Subrata Mukherjee admitted the civic body had taken a step in the wrong direction.

Last Thursday, a team of civic officials demolished part of the under-construction staff quarters at Mughalbagan, in Narkeldanga, with payloaders. The demolition drive was stopped immediately after railway officials raised an objection. The divisional railway manager of Sealdah took up the issue with municipal commissioner Debasish Som on Friday.

“It was wrong on our part to demolish the construction,” mayor Mukherjee said on Sunday. “I have asked municipal commissioner Som to submit a report on how the demolition took place without my okay.”

Som said he, too, was not aware of the action the civic building department had planned against the construction. When asked for an explanation, director-general (building) Ashok Roychoudhury said an assistant engineer had carried out the operation without consulting him.

“The decision was taken by a Trinamul Congress heavyweight in the civic body to pressurise the contractor,” said a senior engineer in the building department.

Shouldering the blame for the act, mayoral council member (building) Swapan Samaddar said: “The construction, in my locality, was unauthorised. It had become a prestige issue for me and so, I directed my officers to demolish the structure.”

Construction work on two buildings, part of the Rs 42-lakh project of the railways, started in June 2003. Four buildings will come up at the Narkeldanga site, housing 24 staff quarters.

The financial damage caused by the demolition drive has been pegged at Rs 3.38 lakh. “We will write to the CMC seeking compensation,” a railway spokesperson said on Sunday. “But there is no immediate plan to move court.”

Railway officials asserted that there was no need to take the CMC’s permission to construct buildings on their own land. “As per Section 11 of the Indian Railway Act of 1989, Government Building Act IV, 1899, and Cantonment Act, 1924, the railways need not take any prior permission from civic bodies for construction on its own land,” an official said.

But mayor-in-council member Samaddar has refused to relent. “The railways are not above the law. They must seek permission from the civic authorities for carrying out construction in the CMC area,” he said, when civic deputy chief law officer Shaktibrata Ghosh pointed out the railway relaxation.