A piece of old furniture on the plot adjoining Purbasha. Picture by Amit Datta

• A watery tract at 32 Canal Circular Road features as a “tank” on a list prepared by the project management unit of the civic body in 1998-99.

• Assessment records — dating back to 1923 — with the civic body mention 32 Canal Circular Road as “land”.

Caught between two conflicting classifications — pond and land — of the same address, the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) has commissioned an inquiry report.

“The assessment department is scanning all available records and preparing a report on the nature of the plot,” said an official in the civic body.

“The report will be handed over to municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay on Tuesday,” he added.

The 11-bigha plot on Maniktala Main Road — acquired by Mani Group — turned into a battlefield after some local residents protested work at the watery tract on Saturday.

Following the dispute over the nature of the plot, the civic body issued a stop-work notice on the basis of its list of tanks prepared in 1998-99.

“We have abided by the stop-work notice. But we have also submitted records to prove that the tract has always been land,” said Subesh Ray, the vice-president of Mani Group, contesting the civic tank list.

The list of tanks was compiled after collecting reports from borough offices, conducting surveys and tallying them with CMC’s aerial survey report. According to a civic official, if water was found at the plot during physical inspection, it was natural to include it in the tank list.

Mani Group insists that the plot was always “land”, and never earmarked as a water body.

Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya remained steadfast in his opposition to what he viewed as the filling up of a water body. “Our preliminary observation is that the plot on Canal Circular Road is a tank…. Now, we are waiting for the detailed report,” the mayor said on Monday.