Eight electrical furnaces are lying unused for more than a month at Nimtala burning ghat - where people often queue up for hours to cremate bodies - as the chief minister is still to inaugurate them.

'The new furnaces are ready. Once they start operating, the number of electric furnaces at Nimtala will be 12,' mayor Sovan Chatterjee said on Tuesday.

'Two will be kept reserved for VIPs. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has said she would inaugurate the furnaces on January 14,' he said.

An official of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation's electrical department said the furnaces have been ready for use since the last week of November. The department installed the furnaces at a cost of Rs 21 crore.

'The chief minister had expressed her desire to inaugurate them. A special card wasdesigned for the occasion and order for printing was placed early in December,' a civic official said. 'But we could not send it for printing because she had not confirmed the inauguration date.'

The delay in commissioning the furnaces has meant long queues at the crematorium, which always remains crowded.

Rajat Dutta of Sovabazar, who was at Nimtala for the cremation of his friend's grandmother on December 26, said: 'It was around 9.30am and we had to wait for two hours for our turn. Workers at the ghat told us that new furnaces were ready but were still to be inaugurated. If they were in operation, many people would not have had to spend hours waiting at the crematorium.'

Ganesh Das of Baguiati said he had to go to Nimtala in the first week of December with a near one who had died at Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. 'We reached the ghat at 4.30pm. The registrar told us that two bodies were before us in the queue. He advised us to go to Kashi Mitra ghat if we did not want to wait. We ended up waiting two-and-a-half hours.'

Of the four functional electrical furnaces at Nimtala, two are used round the clock and two are kept on standby.

Three furnaces are run simultaneously if there is a long queue. But one is always kept on standby for VIPs.

A civic health department employee at Nimtala burning ghat said 50 bodiesare cremated daily in two furnaces. 'Between 70 and 80 bodies are cremated daily at Nimtala on an average. During winter, the number crosses 100,' he said.

Mayoral council member (health) Atin Ghosh confirmed that the number often crosses 100 during winter.

Cremating a body typically takes about an hour.

'A group often has to wait for hours for cremation. The wait often stretches to four hours,' a worker said.

Nimtala is perennially busy because besides north Calcutta, it serves much of the northern suburbs, including Salt Lake and New Town.

Former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjeehad laid the foundation stone on April 25, 2010, to upgrade and expand the crematorium so that the waiting time could be reduced.

The Rs 14-crore CMDA project also included the setting up of Rabindranath Tagore and Prafulla Chandra Ray memorial gardens.