REITA CHOWDHURY, CPM councillor of ward 41, met readers of The Telegraph on Friday to answer their queries. Participants included Rajesh Jadav, Raja Ram Agarwal, Sandip Banerjee, Saroj Jha, P. Dalmia, Muzaffar Alam, Anand Kumar Gupta, Md Sohrab, Manjit Singh, Durgaprasad Chakraborty, Dilip Gupta and Kishor Kumar Srivastav

Raja Ram Agarwal: Fifteen minutes of rain is followed by 15 hours of waterlogging on the stretch of CR Avenue between Provas Cinema and Ram Mandir. About 100 traders, including me, suffer from insomnia during monsoon, since rain means soiling of stocks. We have had to visit our shops at midnight during a downpour to shift the stocks elsewhere.

The problem is as old as the Metro Rail. A special task force set up by municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay pointed out in its report that the water mains on CR Avenue has blocked the brick sewers in the area. The mayor has already allotted Rs 15 crore to tackle the waterlogging problem in different pockets of the city.

Rajesh Jadav: How can you keep Chitpur Road in a miserable condition for the sake of a few trams? If trams are indeed a part of the city heritage, it is criminal not to maintain their tracks. You cannot allow an important road to remain almost defunct on the plea of maintaining heritage.

The CMC does not run trams. It is for the state government to decide whether trams will be withdrawn from Chitpur Road or not.

I admit that the condition of Chitpur Road is deplorable. However, you must remember that the road had reached such a state during the tenure of the previous civic board. The present board has resumed repair of roads with tram tracks.

Md Sohrab: Irresponsible traders and inactive administration have made roads in the Mechhua wholesale fruit market inaccessible. A group of traders have encroached on the main road. I, as the president of Mechhua Fruit Merchants? Association, have written to the administration several times about the problem, but without any result. Accepting my failure, I request your help in this regard.

Though the road belongs to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), the police and the transport department never ask me to attend meetings to solve the problem. What can I do if the administration thinks that a traffic policeman or an officer from the local police station knows more about the problems of the market than the local councillor?

A group of traders and transport operators are so unruly that they don?t care about the police or even high court orders. Calcutta High Court had restricted parking on Ballavdas Street, Madan Mohan Burman Street and Chitpur Spur, but without any avail.

However, please send me the copies of the letters you had written to the administration. I will take up the matter at a proper forum.

P. Dalmia: A Hanuman temple and Shiva temple have come up on Madan Chatterjee Lane. At night these temples become the den of drunks and gamblers.

It is an administrative matter. I do not want to interfere in this issue since residents of the locality have allowed the temples to come up.

Manjit Singh: Munshi Sadruddin Lane has been made one-way, but the local people have not benefited because of unauthorised parking of goods vehicles.

If you submit a formal application with signatures of the residents, I can take up the matter with the traffic police.

Muzaffar Alam: There is no community hall in the Mechhua area. Can you construct one?

Give me the land to build a community hall and a pay-and-use toilet, and I will construct them. I have a plan to develop the plot beside my ward office into a community hall. But the problem is the piece of land is recorded as park in the CMC records.

Concluded