Mukundapur could again get flooded this monsoon just like it had during several monsoons in the recent past, officials of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said.
Two canals, which drain out water from the area, have hardly been dredged, said a KMC official. Also, a project to lay underground drainage pipelines is unlikely to be over before 2023.
Kolkata’s southeast neighbourhood remained flooded for several days last year, forcing many residents to stay indoors and skip office. The water had entered the ground-floor parking bay and the elevator of some of the apartment blocks.
Several hospitals in the area, too, had their parking bays flooded.
“There is unlikely to be much of a change in Mukundapur this year. Waterlogging seems inevitable this year, too, if it rains heavily,” said a KMC official. “The Tollygunge-Panchannagram (TP) and Guniagachhi canals, which drain out water from Mukundapur, have not been dredged yet. Only a small portion of the TP canal, near Chowbhaga, has been dredged.” Siltation reduces a canal’s capacity to drain out water and leads to waterlogging.
The rainwater from Kolkata is drained out into the river Bidyadhari, located to the east of Kolkata, through a network of canals.
The state irrigation department has taken up a project to dredge the canals in Kolkata. State irrigation minister Saumen Mahapatra had told The Telegraph a few days back that about 30 per cent of dredging had been completed.
Mukundapur had a large number of marshy plots and water bodies. As the population burgeoned, the water bodies and marshy plots, where excess water from the area would flow into, were filled up and buildings came up on them.
As a result, rainwater does not find any outlet and accumulates on the road. To make matters worse, large swathes of Mukundapur do not have underground drainage systems. And many lanes and bylanes do not even have surface drains, said Subir Dey, a resident.
“The main road in my area has surface drains, but not the lanes,” said Dey.
The KMC has started building a drainage pumping station and laying underground drainage pipes in Mukundapur, but the work will get over before next year's monsoon, said an engineer of the civic body.
Civic engineers said the drainage pumping station was being built to boost the flow of accumulated water into the canal.
One of the engineers, however, said the situation might not be as bad as last year because the TP canal had been dredged near Chowbhaga. Also the blocks in the canal that were there last year because of the construction of the New Garia-Airport Metro line have been removed.
Dey's car was damaged during last year's monsoon. The water level had risen so much that it even went above the silencer of the car, which was parked in the ground-floor parking lot in his housing complex.
An official of AMRI Mukundapur said they had kept sandbags and built partition walls to prevent water from entering the basement. Peerless Hospital, located near Mukundapur, has also built a partition to stop water from entering the ground floor.
