Tall on promises, short on delivery. This defining attribute of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) stood vindicated, once again, on Thursday.

At the outset of the monsoon, mayor Subrata Mukherjee had repeatedly stated that Calcuttans would not face waterlogging this year, thanks to a long list of schemes drawn up by the CMC at a ?heavy investment?.

But much to the Calcuttan?s chagrin, the claim fell flat on its face. Here?s a sample of how the city fathers went about the task of fulfilling their promise.

The much-hyped Rs 60-crore drainage revamp scheme, taken up with the state government in 1997 for Shakespeare Sarani and Camac Street, hasn?t proceeded beyond the drawing board over the past seven years. Promising to wind up the project by 2000, the civic authorities had even imposed a drainage tax (80 per cent of the water tax) on commercial users.

The scheme included augmentation of the Palmer Bazaar pumping station, repair of brick sewers and desilting of the sewer lines. Municipal affairs minister Asok Bhattacharya had approved a grant of Rs 10 crore in the 1997-98 fiscal.

A Rs 18-crore scheme to set up a lift pumping station on Southern Avenue was taken up in the middle of 2002. The station was scheduled to be commissioned by July 2004.

But a feud between the mayor and his council member (drainage and sewerage) Mala Roy saw to it that the project was not commissioned on time. The last 100 feet of the discharge pipeline, to Tolly?s Nullah via Sadhucharan Lane, could not be laid for the past 18 months.

The civic body had procured six jetting machines and four big jetting-cum-suction machines, at a cost of Rs 2 crore, to pump out accumulated silt from underground sewer lines. But the capacity of the sewer lines has not been upgraded.