Durgapur: The Bengal irrigation department has decided to conduct a detailed survey of the decades old barrages under its control and prepare a status report on the condition of sluice gates in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the breaking of a gate in the Durgapur Barrage.

At present, the state government has three barrages under its control - Durgapur on the Damodar, Tilpara on the Mayurakshi in Birbhum and Teesta on the Teesta river in Jalpaiguri district.

"We have decided to conduct a survey of all our barrages and the condition of the gates after the incident in Durgapur.... All the barrages are decades old and they are in need of repairs so that they can withstand the pressure of water," state irrigation minister Rajib Banerjee said.

The minister said he had instructed officials and the irrigation secretary to take the assistance of IIT Kharagpur and Jadavpur University while carrying out the survey.

"I held a meeting with my officials and told them that the survey has to be carried out soon," he added.

On November 24, one of the sluice gates at Durgapur barrage got twisted and fell into the lower catchment of the Damodar, causing the water stored in the upper catchment area to gush out and leaving the other side dry.

As a portion of the upper catchment area went dry, households and factories in Durgapur faced immense shortage of water supply.

Irrigation department officials said that the gate had fallen off as it could not bear the pressure of the water.

Sources said the state government hadn't conducted an overhauling of the nearly 5-inch thick iron sluice gates since the DVC handed over the Durgapur barrage in 1965. Most of the gates - which had been built to prevent the water released from the dams in Maithan, Panchet and Tilaiya in Jharkhand to flow into the farmland in central Bengal - are in urgent need of repairs.

Asked about the cost involved to conduct the survey, Banerjee said it was yet to finalised. "We cannot ascertain the project cost right now as we are going to start the survey. But we have to do the job by arranging funds on our own if the Centre does not give us any," he said.

Water supply to Durgapur households and factories did not resume on Monday as the feeder channels leading to the water treatment plants and the Durgapur Projects Limited did not receive adequate water.

The Durgapur Municipal Corporation has been supplying water through 65 tanks in various locations but that is not enough.

"Water supply to the town has been affected since Saturday. We are now fed up with the situation," said Kalpana Banerjee, a homemaker.

The mayoral council member (water) at DMC said the civic body expected the situation to become normal by late on Monday evening.