Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will inaugurate the new Tallah bridge on Thursday, a little over two years after the earlier structure was pulled down.
Built at an estimated cost of Rs 460 crore, the new bridge is 750 metres long and connects Shyambazar with places such as Chiria More, Sinthi, Baranagar, Dunlop and Belghoria. The inauguration of the bridge will lead to significant reduction in the journey time of thousands of people who commute between the city and northern suburbs.
On Wednesday, the state government received the formal fitness test certificates for the bridge from IIT Kharagpur and the railways.
The bridge has two flanks, each of them 9.5 metres wide, senior PWD officials said. One of the flanks is for vehicles headed for Shyambazar and the other for those headed for BT Road.
The load-bearing capacity of the new structure is 500 tonnes. The old bridge, which was 60 years old when it was pulled down, had a load-bearing capacity of 400 tonnes.
While small and medium vehicles will start plying over the bridge from Thursday, heavy vehicles, including buses, will have to wait for a week for the final nod, officials said.
The state government had engaged L&T to build the bridge.
Wildlife photography exhibition
Actor Sabyasachi Chakraborty at an exhibition of wildlife photography at the Academy of Fine Arts that was inaugurated on Wednesday. From an elephant herd in Amboseli National Park in Kenya to a rare red fox in the Spiti valley of Himachal Pradesh, the exhibition has many subjects. It features over 130 pictures by 19 people, including Chakraborty and his son Gaurav, and Chandan Sen, also actors.
A picture of a rhinoceros, clicked by the senior Chakraborty at Kaziranga in Assam around seven years ago, is among those displayed. “It was raining. I was standing under a watchtower. I saw an approaching rhino. But it showed no signs of stopping. It kept coming closer and increasing its speed gradually. Some in our group climbed the watchtower. The rest of us, on the ground, started shouting. That drew the animal’s attention. Rhinos have poor eyesight. It halted the march because of the noise and turned away,” he said.
Some of the pictures clicked by Gaurav at Amboseli National Park in Kenya are also among those on display. The exhibition is underway from 3pm to 8pm till September 26.
Found hanging
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Garage blast injures five
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