Construction of 71 homes in Bowbazar, which will replace crack-ridden ones, is likely to start in February, officials of the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) said on Sunday.
Seventy-one houses in Durga Pituri Lane and Shyakrapara Lane in Bowbazar, where cracks appeared following subsidence in 2019 and in May this year during the underground tunneling work of East-West Metro, had been identified for demolition. Some of them have already been pulled down.
The KMRC is the implementing agency of East-West Metro. The engineers who had examined the cracks in the 71 buildings said those are beyond repairs.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) placed a report on the buildings where cracks had appeared at a meeting in Nabanna on Saturday.
The list of homes to be rebuilt excludes the ones in Madan Dutta Lane where cracks appeared on Friday following a fresh subsidence triggered by Metro work, resulting in displacement of around 100 people. An assessment has to be done to find out how many of these homes have to be pulled down.
“We have plans to start construction of new homes in February. It might get delayed by a fortnight. A Jadavpur University (JU) team has submitted a report. Based on that, we will see if there are more vulnerable houses. Tenders will be floated after the number of homes that have to be rebuilt is finalised,” said C.N. Jha, managing director of KMRC.
The KMRC will soon issue tenders for the construction of homes in place of ones which were damaged in the disasters 2019 and in May this year, an official of the agency said.
The new buildings will have a defect liability period of three years, which means the KMRC will be responsible for any cracks that may develop owing to subsidence during that period after the completion of the construction, a KMC official said.
According to him, soil settlement, or subsidence, can happen for some time after the construction of the Metro tunnels.
Discussions are on about the design of the buildings —whether there will be apartment blocks with a separate space for shops or standalone houses.
Discussions with the owners of the homes that need to be razed have been on for sometime. The residents turned down a proposal for apartment blocks.
“The residents did not give their consent to the proposal. They want ownership of the land on which their old homes stood, which is not possible if a single large apartment block is built,” said the official. “Afresh proposal was mooted, for individual homes.”
The old houses were built at a time when municipal laws did not require buildings to leave open space around them, something that is mandatory under the KMC’s current building rules. If the length and breadth of the new structures have to be identical to the old ones, relaxations of building rules have to be sought, said a KMC official.
