One of the city’s few remaining boulevards was restored in 2023 but has developed cracks and potholes again by mid-2025. The condition of Southern Avenue raises serious questions about the quality of repairs carried out by the civic body.

Unlike most places where potholes are hastily patched up with bituminous hot mix because of time constraints, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) took several weeks to carefully repair this tree-lined road.

Two years ago, the civic body had cut rectangular and square-shaped portions on the road where potholes had formed. Engineers had then claimed that such repairs would be more durable.

But the condition of the road tells a different story.

A KMC official said they had noticed the craters.

The contractor will be asked to fix the damages without any fresh payment as the cracks have occurred within the five-year “defect liability period”, he added.

On Monday night, the KMC started scraping off and cleaning the portions to be repaired. The surface has to be cleaned before bituminous mixture is poured over it, without which the repairs will wear off fast.

However, the question persists as to why road repairs in the city fail to be more durable.

“Is there any quality check of materials being used during road repairs? Are the repairs being done following the right protocol?”wondered a resident of the area.

Experts said that even patchwork repairs should not wear off so quickly.

“Even for patchwork, it is unexpected that the repairs will not sustain for even two monsoons. It raises questions about the repair method and materials used,” said Partha Pratim Biswas, a professor of construction engineering at Jadavpur University.

He ruled out waterlogging for the current condition of Southern Avenue. “The drainage at Southern Avenue is much improved now, compared to what it was 20 years ago. So, waterlogging is usually not a problem,” said Biswas.

The road, however, got waterlogged after Saturday’s deluge.

The KMC official said the civic body has “a separate department that produces the bituminous mixture used for road repairs”.

“They ensure that the mixture has all the constituents mixed in the right proportion and it was prepared at the right conditions,” said the official.

“The contractor who conducted the repairs has to undertake fresh repairs on his own. The KMC will not pay him for this round of repairs because the road has suffered cracks within the five-year defect liability period,” said the engineer.

A senior official added that even a road that was repaired adhering to all protocols can develop cracks if it was dug up again in the intermediate period for any utility repair.

Calcutta’s underground has multiple utility lines arranged in a disorderly manner. They do not run along one side and are spread across the underground.

“We have to check why this has happened on Southern Avenue,” said the official.

The potholes were easy to spot during a drive through Southern Avenue last week.

On multiple stretches, there were worn off surfaces. Both flanks — Golpark-bound and Tollygunge-bound — had many craters but the number was more on the Golpark-bound flank. A 25-metre stretch near Lake Kalibari has completely worn off.

Another stretch in front of Ananda Apartment has potholes across the width of the road.

There are stretches where the top layer as well as the road materials underneath the top layer have worn off, forming depressions.

“When I was crossing the stretch, I was surprised to see so many potholes and cracks on a road that was repaired only two years ago,” said an elderly resident.

“We did not scrape off the entire road in 2023, but we did repair the stretch with a lot of care. We scraped off larger portions of the road around the sites of damage before pouring bituminous mixture in a manner that the repaired stretch was on the same level as the unaffected stretch,” explained an engineer.

The Telegraph has been reporting about the poor condition of roads across the city and how commuting on them is fraught with danger.