India News | Hakim Visits Bowbazar, Blames KMRC

Kolkata, May 12 (PTI) West Bengal Housing minister and city mayor Firhad Hakim Thursday visited Bowbazar area where cracks appeared in a number of houses and blamed Kolkata Metro Railway Corporation (KMRC) for it.

Hakim claimed that the cracks on buildings at Durga Pitury Lane are likely to have occurred owing to continuing soil settlement in the area trigerred by an accident over two and half years ago during tunneling work.

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The accident occured after Metro tunneling work in the area and soil settlement can occur after two to three years.

"There is some irresponsibility on their (KMRC) part. During a meeting following the accident in 2019, KMRC had said that it took the total engineering responsibility of that area," the mayor told reporters during a visit to the affected area.

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Claiming that KMRC, the executing agency for the East West Metro project, has failed to take the responsibility, Hakim said that they should have taken care of the buildings before cracks developed in them.

Tunnels of the long awaited East-West Metro corridor pass under Bowbazar. Most of the buildings in the area are over a century old.

A tunnel boring machine(TBM) had hit an aquifer on August 31, 2019, in Bowbazar leading to severe ground subsidence and collapse of several buildings.

The KMRC said that its priority is to prevent further cracks in buildings and 82 people of 21 families from at least five damaged houses at Durga Pituri Lane have been shifted to nearby hotels.

The mayor said that the director general of the building department of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has been asked to assess how safe it would be to let the damaged buildings exist and a decision will be taken soon.

He said that the KMC and KMRC will hold joint meetings to assess the fate of the damaged buildings.

KMRC general manager, administration, A K Nandy said that engineers have been working in the Metro tunnels passing below the affected area since Wednesday night and the reasons for the cracks can be ascertained only after their assessment.

"We are assessing the reasons for the cracks and working to prevent damage to any more buildings in the area" he told PTI.

"Our main priority now is to prevent any further cracks in the affected houses and other buildings in the area," he said.

In August, 2019, several houses at Durga Pituri Lane and adjoining areas were damaged owing to land subsidence caused by an aquifer burst during tunneling work.

One of the two TBMs used for the two-way tunneling work was damaged beyond repair owing to the accident and the remaining tunneling work was done using one TBM.

Tunneling work for both up and down lines between Howrah and Sealdah was completed over two months ago, Nandy said.

The 16.6 km long East West metro corridor connecting Howrah Maidan and Sector V in Salt Lake is partially operational between Sector V station and Phoolbagan.

Out of the 16.6 km length, underground corridor constitutes 10.8 km between Howrah and Phoolbagan with the tunnel passing below the Hooghly river, while the rest is elevated corridor, according to a KMRC official. PTI dc AMR

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)