Kolkata’s road-repair drive ahead of Durga Puja is facing repeated setbacks from continuous rainfall, even as the state government and civic agencies race to meet an October 10 deadline for repairing damaged stretches across the city and state.
Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said on Friday that the government had assessed the condition of every road in the state and was undertaking urgent repairs. He said district magistrates and police superintendents would coordinate the work, with the aim of repairing state and national highways before Bengal’s biggest festival.
“The monsoon has stretched for a long time, since June. Even yesterday, it rained for almost the entire day. All over the state, it has been raining heavily. The roads are in poor condition,” Suvendu said, according to the Telegraph India report. He added that a meeting would be held under the chief secretary to coordinate the repair programme.
The immediate challenge is visible on several important Kolkata routes. Two large, water-filled craters were reported on Taratala Road at its crossing with Diamond Harbour Road, where two-wheelers, cars and buses struggled to pass. Road-repair equipment, including a roller, hot bitumen drums and stone chips, was stationed near the entrance to the Prince Anwar Shah Road connector.
An engineer of the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, which maintains the connector and several other roads, said repair crews were working through the night but that fresh rain was undoing the work the following morning. The engineer said the agency remained hopeful of delivering a temporary improvement before Puja.
Stop-gap repairs have also been carried out on parts of EM Bypass near Mukundapur, including the stretch in front of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute. However, a section near the Dhalai bridge, close to Shahid Khudiram Metro station, continued to show extensive damage. The top surface had come off at places, exposing bricks, while potholes of different sizes affected traffic movement.
VIP Road near Chinar Park presented a separate problem, with an uneven carriageway and potholes on both sides. The stretch has also been affected by construction work for the New Garia–airport Metro corridor, known as the Orange Line. Some of the deeper craters showed signs of earlier patchwork repairs.
The repair effort involves several agencies, including the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, the KMDA and the Public Works Department. Kolkata Police flagged more than 200 roads in early September for urgent or immediate repairs and shared the list with the KMC.
The civic body subsequently identified 76 roads as being in particularly poor condition. KMC administrator Smita Pandey said earlier this month that 31 of those roads had been repaired and that the remaining 45 would be completed before Durga Puja. The state’s October 10 deadline falls on Mahalaya, the traditional start of the festive season, leaving agencies to complete the remaining work while rainfall continues.
