Metro Railway has been kept waiting for official clearance to resume the Majerhat portion of the Joka-Esplanade project despite chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s announcement in Frankfurt earlier this week that there was no need to keep work suspended any longer.

Senior police officers said they hadn’t received a directive from the government to give Metro Railway the green signal to resume construction, which was stalled by the Majerhat bridge collapsing on September 4.

The delay has apparently been caused by government officials awaiting a formal communication from Mamata, who is visiting Europe to market Bengal as a business destination, before contacting the railway authorities.

Metro Railway has decided to wait until next week to approach the government for a clarification. “If any communication doesn’t come from the government by Monday, we will approach them and ask why they are not giving us permission to resume work,” a senior official said. “The forensic investigation (into the collapse of the Majerhat bridge) is over and there is no reason to keep the project from resuming.”

Construction of the proposed Metro station adjacent to the Majerhat bridge stopped the moment the bridge collapsed. Three days later, the police formally asked Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), the implementing agency for the project, to suspend work till further orders.

The chief minister had said that the possibility of vibrations caused by Metro construction damaging the bridge needed to be forensically investigated.

On September 18, Mamata announced that the Metro project would be allowed to resume. “We had told Metro Railway that till the time our forensic examination on why the bridge collapsed is not completed and (we find out) who are responsible (for this), for those days work will be stopped,” she said. “Our investigation is over and so the portion of the project where Metro Railway had stopped work, that can resume.”

Mamata also said that a task force would be set up for better coordination between the public works department, which will pull down the broken bridge and construct a new one, and the railways.

Chief secretary Malay De will head the task force, she said.

Metro Railway officials said the Joka-Esplanade project had been incurring losses for each day lost. An engineer pegged the minimum expenditure at more than Rs 1 lakh a day even without a brick being moved.

The Majerhat project site had 72 workers, two of whom died when the bridge collapsed.

Since workers and machinery had been moved after work was stalled, Metro Railway will need time to remobilise resources once permission to resume work comes. Access to the site is now limited, which could affect supply of construction materials.

Additional reporting by Monalisa Chaudhuri