ICON ALIGHT: Fireworks to mark the lighting up of Howrah bridge. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

The night sky over New Millennium Park was all lit up with fireworks, as Calcutta Port Trust unveiled the special lighting of Howrah bridge, or Rabindra Setu, on Thursday.

The occasion prompted Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi to comment that even as some bridges are lit up, the rivers glowing in the imported lights continue to be polluted.

The lighting of the Howrah bridge was one of the several projects taken up by the Port Trust to beautify the riverfront, chairman A.K. Chanda told Metro on Friday.

A water-screen laser show is coming up in six months. Also on the anvil, in association with the corporate sector, is a cruise service to the Sunderbans and Lakshwadeep.

Corporate groups will also be invited to sponsor the upkeep of the Howrah bridge lights, Chanda added.

To make Calcutta’s icon “shimmer in all its glory against the night sky” had been the dream of the late light designer Tapas Sen, who was adviser of the Rs 3.5-crore project that began in 2004.

Sen’s son Joy, who picked up the thread after his father’s death, was satisfied.

So was Sudeshna Mukhopadhyay, who headed the engineering team of Philips Electronics India Ltd that was involved in the project. “Philips will maintain the lights for two years. So, we have time to fine-tune the settings. We have achieved 90 per cent of what had been envisioned,” said Mukhopadhyay. “But it will not be possible to light up the entire bridge, as we must also take care not to spoil the daylight view of the bridge by erecting structures on it.”