Several roads across the city remain riddled with potholes as the September 15 deadline set by the mayor for completing repairs expired on Monday.
Civic officials said spells of rain had slowed down the repair work, leading to the missed deadline.
Mayor Firhad Hakim will inspect most of the major thoroughfares of the city on Friday.
Officials of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said they are caught between time constraints and rain in their effort to complete the repair by then.
At a Puja coordination meeting held on September 8, several borough chairpersons of the KMC voiced their frustration about battered roads across the city. Hakim had said after the meeting that if the weather holds, road repairs should be completed by September 15.
On Monday, a week since that meeting, Metro found Canal South Road — the road running along Beleghata Circular Canal — in a deplorable
condition.
There were potholes and depressions large and deep enough to topple a vehicle. In some stretches the craters and worn off areas forced opposite moving vehicles to use a narrow strip of road.
The other half had turned unmotorable.
“I take Canal West Road often while coming to central Calcutta to avoid the snarls on the Parama flyover. This road has been in a very poor condition for weeks. Some repairs were done but they have proved to be inadequate,” said a New Town resident.
PK Mukherjee Road, which connects the Chitpore bridge and the Tala bridge, too had large potholes and depressions. Pools of water had
accumulated after a spell of rain on the potholes on Monday afternoon.
A borough chairperson had highlighted the state of PK Mukherjee Road at the Puja coordination meeting.
The EM Bypass-Prince Anwar Shah Road Connector crossing or stretches of
Broad Street and Palm
Avenue in south Calcutta had potholes till Monday
afternoon.
A senior official of KMC said repairs were still going on but rain created obstacles in the repairs.
“If the potholes are wet, we have to delay the repairs till they become dry. We have kept teams deployed who will carry on repairs till Chaturthi or Panchami. But once the Puja crowd descend on the streets, it will be difficult to repair,” said the official. “If the repairs are done on a wet surface, then there is a possibility of the newly put bituminous mixture becoming loose and coming off,” he said.
“The roads will be fine if it does not rain after this ongoing spell of rain,” added the official.
In Calcutta, the sky was occasionally cloudy with spells of rain on Monday. A cyclonic circulation over Bangladesh has triggered the latest wet spell in Bengal.
The retreat of the southwest monsoon usually starts from around September
17 from Rajasthan. In Calcutta, the usual date of the
withdrawal of the monsoon is October 10.
Hakim will inspect the roads on Friday.
KMC officials said the mayor will first visit Behala, Joka and Garia where the civic body laid new drainage lines over the last few years.
Residents of pockets of these areas have repeatedly complained about projects dragging on for years and the roads remaining in extremely poor condition.
“Some of the roads where the work has been completed or some work is still left include MG Road in Behala-Haridevpur, Srijani in Joka
and pockets of Garia,” said an official.
Hakim will later tour parts of north, central and south Calcutta to inspect arterial roads like EM Bypass and Central Avenue.