Two footbridges had been sanctioned for Santragachi station, where a stampeded on the lone, narrow footbridge on Tuesday evening left two men dead, in the fiscal 2010-11.

One is barely 20 per cent complete and the other, 30 per cent.

Railway officials admit the tragedy could have been averted had the new footbridges — which will be 12m-wide, as against the 5ft width of the existing footbridge — been ready.

The stampede broke out after six trains had pulled in one after another and another two were about to enter the station.

The two victims — Taser Sardar, 61, from Hariharpara in Murshidabad, and Kamalakanta Singha, 28, from Kolaghat in East Midnapore — were the sole earning members of their families.

Fourteen people were injured. The condition of one them, being treated at SSKM Hospital, is critical.

The new footbridges, along with a proposal to build a terminal building and a host of other amenities, were sanctioned when Mamata Banerjee was railway minister in 2010-11.

Mamata visited the station on Tuesday night and blamed the railways for the tragedy.

The South Eastern Railway, under which Santragachi station falls, had awarded the contract to IRCON International Ltd, a central government undertaking incorporated by the railway ministry.

The lone footbridge at the station where a stampede killed two men on Tuesday evening. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

A board at the bottom of the incomplete footbridge mentions details of the project. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

The agency had signed an MoU with the railway ministry in October 2012. Work started the same fiscal, an official said.

Officials said the Rs 201-crore project included building a subway, walkalators and a road connecting the station with Kona Expressway.

The MoU is being renewed every year. The one signed in the 2018-19 fiscal pegs the project cost at Rs 388 crore and sets a deadline of March 31, 2019, for the terminal building.

There is no deadline for the footbridges.

Railway officials stressed the need for at least one more footbridge at the station, which records a daily footfall of more than 30,000.

Apart from train passengers, a large number of local people use the footbridge to commute between Kona Expressway and the other side of the station.

“The footbridge is mostly crowded. The condition worsens when a number of trains arrive in quick succession,” a railway official said.

The fatal stampede has prompted the railways to ask IRCON to complete the footbridges at the earliest.

“We met IRCON representatives today and asked them to work on a war footing. They have been asked to ensure that at least one footbridge is ready soon,” a spokesperson for the South Eastern Railway said.

He blamed “legal and technical issues” for the delay in the construction.

“Work was stalled for more than a year because of an order by the National Green Tribunal. Also, a number of tracks in the Santragachi yard had to be removed to facilitate the construction of the arms of the footbridges,” the official said.

Another official said Santragachi being a busy station, where trains arrive at short intervals, work had to proceed slowly.

An official in the railway ministry in Delhi, however, asserted that the footbridges should have been ready within three years of the start of construction.

“Unlike issues such as unavailability of land, which have delayed Metro projects in Calcutta, the construction of the footbridges had faced no problem,” a railway official pointed out.