The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has started desilting and strengthening the banks of Bikramgarh Jheel beside South City, which was in a state of neglect for years, the mayoral council member heading the civic body’s environment department said on Wednesday.
There are encroachments along the banks of the seven-acre water body that are posing challenges, Swapan Samaddar, the mayoral council member (environment), told The Telegraph.
A senior official of the civic body said the work is getting delayed because the KMC is unable to decide the alignment of bulla piling, or strengthening the banks. The alignment of the piling will depend on whether the KMC brass decides to remove the encroachments or not.
Narrow roads, which are the only means of access to the water body, are also delaying the work, said the official.
“We have started cleaning the Bikramgarh Jheel. We will do bulla piling and also plant saplings along the banks of the water body,” Samaddar said at the monthly meeting
of KMC councillors on Wednesday.
“There are also encroachments along the banks,” he later told The Telegraph.
Bikramjhal Jheel is an artificial lake that came into existence when the then Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) dug the land to raise neighbouring areas and roads. Over the years, its size kept shrinking as permanent houses, as well as temporary constructions, came up along its banks.
KMC sources said the plantation along the banks will also prevent, or at least reduce, the possibility of further encroachment.
“We will plant saplings of various kinds of trees, some of them will grow into large trees with a big canopy,” said Samaddar.
An amount of ₹3 crore, allocated for cleaning and strengthening the water body and its banks, was sourced under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 2.0 scheme.
The Centre is providing 25 per cent of the funds, the state government is bearing 65 per cent of the cost, while the KMC is pitching in with 10 per cent of the expenses.
Mousumi Das, the councillor of Ward 93, sought to know on Wednesday when the restoration of the water body will start again. In her question at the monthly meeting of KMC councillors, Das mentioned that the state government had allocated ₹2.27 crore for the restoration of the water body about 5 years ago, and some work had been done. Between 60 and 65 per cent of the work remained unfinished, she said in her written question.
“The fund released last time was inadequate for cleaning of the entire water body,” said Samaddar.
The cleaning and strengthening work started two months back and the deadline for completion is eight months, said the senior KMC official. “The progress has not been satisfactory, and it seems we will miss the 8-month deadline,” the official added.
“We are not able to scale up the desilting work because we cannot take large trucks onto the road. Smaller trucks are being used to take out the silt collected from the water body. We can work only at 50 per cent of our pace of what we would have wanted,” added the official.