CMC trucks being filled at the Park Circus booster station on Orient Row

Orient Row, a busy road with heavy vehicular traffic, remains wet and fissured 365 days a year. During the Rs 15-crore pre-Puja road repair this year, the civic authorities overlooked the stretch.

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), itself, is responsible for damaging a major portion of the road because of its Park Circus booster pumping station.

The road has turned into an unauthorised parking bay for water tankers as civic and private water tankers use the Park Circus booster station as a refilling centre.

Craters on Orient Row. Pictures by Talat Salahuddin

Besides, Orient Row is the main arterial road connecting Dargah Road with Park Circus station. It is amazing how the civic authorities forgot this important stretch in their pre-Puja clean-up drive.

Continuous heavy traffic of water tankers together with the cascading water from the water spouts of the booster station have created foot-long craters and potholes on the road and pavement. The condition of the road and pavement close to the Akash Ganga hotel, at 1 Orient Row is deplorable.

Besides, roadside garbage dumps and illegal parking add to the woes of the residents here. During the morning peak hours, the traffic spillover from the Park Circus seven-point crossing and CIT Road affects Orient Row too, which is an old residential area and the tax-payers living in the locality feel neglected, at least with respect to civic care.

Some civic engineers conceded, on condition of anonymity, that Orient Row doesn’t have the load-bearing capacity for tankers. Calcutta roads are divided into six grades according to their load-bearing capacity. Orient Row belongs to the fourth grade, which means it is unfit for bearing the load of water tankers. For broken pavements, however, the engineers blame illegal parking.

Civicspeak: “CMC is looking to solve the problem permanently and is thinking of concretising the road,” — Farzana Chowdhury, local councillor

“Constant flow of water is the root cause of the damage to the road surface on Orient Row. This is perhaps the only road in the city which remains wet round the clock. I have decided to take up the matter with the water supply department,” — Tuhin Bera, mayor-in-council member (roads)

“There are no alternative routes to the Park Circus booster pumping station and every department takes its water supply from there including the fire services department. We are asking the road department to concretise the stretch,” — Bibhash Maity, chief engineer, water supply