The state government has allocated over ₹300 crore to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to implement projects identified through the Amader Para Amader Samadhan programme. Booth-level camps for the programme were held between August and November.

Most of the work under the scheme involves rehabilitation of short segments of roads, addressing drainage issues, or enhancing the lighting of poorly illuminated roads.

The work will be completed by March, an official of the KMC told Metro.

The Bengal Assembly polls are expected to take place between March and May.

The government has sanctioned ₹8,000 crore under the Amader Para Amader Samadhan (our locality, our solutions) programme for the entire state.

Camps were held in each booth across the state to identify problem areas.

A booth is the smallest unit of an Assembly constituency. Several booths make up a ward. Several wards create an Assembly constituency. Several Assembly constituencies comprise a Lok Sabha constituency.

While announcing the broad contours of the scheme last July, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said: “We sometimes find that a neighbourhood needs only a tap or if a small stretch of a road is made, people do not have to walk on slush....”

The bigger projects will continue separately, she said.

A KMC official told this newspaper that they were supposed to hand over all work orders by January 10, but they missed the deadline.

“We are now trying to issue all work orders by January 25. Now that the funds have been allocated, the work orders will be issued quickly,” the official said.

The KMC had initially received ₹52 crore from the state government. Recently, the state allocated another ₹272 crore.

“The majority of the work identified is road restoration or paving a road. Fixing defunct street lights or illuminating a stretch that does not have adequate lights is also common,” said the official.

Bappaditya Dasgupta, the Trinamool Congress councillor for Ward 101 that covers parts of Patuli and Baghajatin, said there was work to be done in all 45 booths of the ward.

“Each booth has been allocated ₹10 lakh, which means a total of ₹4.5 crore has been earmarked for the ward. In some of the booths, proposals worth up to ₹20 lakh were made. KMC engineers had to prioritise the work to be done,” said Dasgupta.

The Amader Para Amader Samadhan programme allows a maximum allocation of ₹10 lakh for a booth. According to sources, there are over 80,000 polling booths in Bengal. Over 4,700 of them are in Calcutta.

Dasgupta said there were some stretches of roads in his Ward that did not have a metalled road surface. “We could not do it earlier because of paucity of funds. We are using funds from this programme to lay a bituminous layer on the road,” he said.

Nandita Roy, the councillor for Ward 103, which covers Santoshpur and its neighbouring areas in south Calcutta, said the work was supposed to start in December.

“It got delayed. The camps went well, and people identified what work needed to be done in their booths,” said Roy, who is from the CPM.