Municipal affairs minister Agnimitra Paul visited a drainage pumping station off Amherst Street on Tuesday, but the condition of the road drew far more attention than the project she had come to inspect.
Open pits, illegal parking and battered stretches of road prompted reactions from the minister in the heart of north Calcutta.
Residents and shop owners told Paul that Amherst Street had remained in this condition for nearly six months.
Paul instructed engineers to close the pits within seven days, restore the damaged roads and asked police to stop illegal parking along the stretch.
Several pits — around 4ft long and 2ft wide — had been dug along the road. Engineers of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said they were for the construction of gully pits.
Paul was unhappy with rainwater accumulating in the open trenches. “These
will turn into mosquito breeding sites. You have to close them within seven days,” she told KMC engineers, who told her they would meet the deadline.
As she walked along Amherst Street, Paul also objected to trucks parked on both sides of the road, often in double rows. She pointed out that the dug-up stretches and open pits had already reduced the usable width of the road. “If vehicles are parked in two lines, how will cars and buses move? Please see that vehicles are parked on one side and along the pavement. They should not occupy a large portion of the road,” she told a traffic police sergeant.
“Even police vehicles cannot be parked in two lines,” she said outside Amherst Street police station.
A resident said sewer lines beneath Amherst Street had been under construction since February. “The road was dug up but never properly restored. The stretch in front of City College is in particularly bad shape. Amherst Street is one-way during the day and becomes two-way after 9pm. Traffic snarls are common as vehicles struggle for space,” the resident said.
Waterlogging on Amherst Street has been a recurring problem for decades. In recent months, the situation has worsened because sewer lines were blocked during the underground work. KMC engineers said the old sewer lines are being replaced and the existing lines had to be blocked for the work.
One engineer said they were “very worried” about Amherst Street during the monsoon.
The new sewer lines will connect to a drainage pumping station being built at Hrishikesh Park.
During Paul’s inspection of the pumping station, a senior KMC engineer told her the facility could be commissioned within a couple of months if adequate funds were released.
“The project cost is ₹48 crore, but we have received only around ₹6 crore so far. Pumps and other necessary equipment have been ordered. If more funds are released, we may be able to commission the station within two months,” the engineer said.
He told the minister that Calcutta receives heavy rainfall in August and September, and if operational by then, the pumping station could substantially reduce waterlogging in the area.
Paul asked the engineer to raise the demand before the municipal affairs department, which she heads.
The minister also visited an under-construction drainage pumping station in Bhowanipore, part of chief minister Suvendu Adhikari’s constituency. She instructed engineers to ensure that dug-up roads were made motorable before the monsoon.
