Dredging equipment lie idle near the Bindusagar lake in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, July 28: A report that one agency says they haven’t received has further deferred the much-delayed project to dredge the 8th century Bindusagar lake, considered holy by many.

The project to restore the water quality of the lake in Old Town was supposed to begin by the middle of this month but is yet to take off.

Officials of the private agency appointed to carry out the dredging work using state-of-the-art technology did not comment on the delay. But authorities of Odisha Construction Company Limited (OCCL), which is the public agency involved, said work had not begun as they were yet to receive the report written by an expert team on the amount of sediment to be removed from the lake. OCCL officials say the report is with the drainage division of the water resources department, which hasn’t shared the information with them. But the drainage division disagrees.

Without the report, the agencies cannot start work.

The project, worth around Rs 3.11 crore, had been assigned to a Calcutta-based company — Rashmi Bulk Shipping Limited — that started fixing heavy dredging machines in the lake on July 3. The company officials had said then that the assembling of the equipment would take at least 10 days and the dredging of this 8th century lake would start immediately after that.

However, till date, the equipment has not been assembled fully and some machines are lying idle near the lake. Sujay Saha, deputy general manager of Rashmi Bulk Shipping Limited, however, did not comment on the delay and said work would start shortly.

Senior manager, defunct projects and recovery cell of OCCL, Md Ayub Ali said an expert team from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, had visited the lake a few days ago and conducted a study on the amount of sediment to be dredged and how deep the lake’s bed had to be dug.

“The drainage division of the water resources department had called the team for its expert opinion on this. Though the team has given their report to the drainage division, we are yet to receive it. As we do not have the report, we cannot proceed with the dredging work,” said Ali.

However, contrary to the OCCL’s claim, the drainage division officials said they had already shared the report with the public agency. Chief engineer, drainage division, R.C. Panda said the IIT team had recently done a pre-measurement of the lake through underwater photography. “We have shared the information with the OCCL officials and the dredging work will start within a day or two,” said Panda.

An OCCL official said that after the report came in, it would take around four months for the cleaning work to be completed.