Iron poles and bamboo frames for Durga Puja banners still hog roads around the city
Telegraph | 9 November 2024
Bamboo frames and iron poles set up on pavements and along roads ahead of Durga Puja to hang advertisement banners are still standing precariously in many places across the city.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), the custodian of the city’s pavements and roads, has done almost nothing yet to get them removed.
Bamboo frames tied to footpath railings and poles still stand along CR Avenue, Rashbehari Avenue, Hazra Road and Asutosh Mukherjee Road (near the Exide crossing).
Iron poles were erected along Rashbehari Avenue, between Priya Cinema and Mahanirvan Math, and their bases were cemented. These poles were placed on the footpath and the road.
Although bamboo poles have been used to hang banners for years, this was the first time such iron poles were dug into the pavement and road to install digital advertisement boards.
The iron poles were set up on a space of the road earmarked for parking cars and two-wheelers and occupy about 2ft width of the road. Cars are now being parked encroaching on a portion of the thoroughfare.
When Metro visited the stretch on Friday afternoon, all cars were parked in a way that a part of the vehicles crossed the blue line that demarcated the parking space.
The poles were set up by the Tridhara Sammilani Durga Puja committee.
Debashis Kumar, MLA from Rashbehari, a mayoral council member of the KMC and one of the organisers of the Tridhara puja, said the poles were not creating problems when he was told that the iron poles have not been removed yet. “I do not think the poles are creating any problem as such. The concrete base of each of the poles has to be broken. The work has to be done at night,” he said.
“The poles will be removed in another five or six days,” Kumar said when asked if he would give a deadline.
A Kolkata Police officer said cops had verbally told the puja organisers to dismantle the iron poles. “We have already asked them to remove the poles,” the officer said.
The bamboo frames, often as high as a two-storey building, are standing precariously eating away portions of the footpath in Lansdowne, near Deshapriya Park, near the Exide crossing and in Monoharpukur. A woman who was walking down the footpath opposite Deshapriya Park hit a low-hanging bamboo pole of one such frame last week.
“I failed to notice the bamboo as the stretch was not well-lit either,” she said.
Kumar, the mayoral council member in charge of the KMC’s advertisement department, said his department was not responsible for removing the bamboo frames.
“The job of the department I head is to clear the flexes and banners hanging from the bamboo frames. All flexes and banners have been removed,” he said.
A senior official said it was difficult to pin responsibility on a Puja committee or an advertising agency for not removing the bamboo frames.
The KMC had asked the advertising agencies to remove all banners and flexes by October 15, the day after the Durga Puja carnival on Red Road. It was assumed that the bamboo poles would also be removed, which has not happened.
“We will have to remove the bamboo frames on our own. Last year, too, we removed the poles that were left behind. Since there are no tags of the owners of the bamboo frames, it is not possible to pin responsibility on an advertising agency or a club for not removing them,” said the official.