Finally, 'long overdue' repairs of battered and broken Bidhannagar road start in Salt Lake
Telegraph | 5 March 2025
The “long overdue” repairs of the battered and broken roads of Bidhannagar started on Monday. The repairs must be completed within a little over a month.
On Monday, work started on a stretch near Nayapatti in Ward 28. It was a ceremonial launch. By the end of this week, the work will begin in all 14 wards where repairs have been planned, said an official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC).
The Telegraph reported several times how the roads in this part of the city had become a nightmare for commuters. Large craters had surfaced on most roads. The top layer has worn out on most of them. Stone chips lay strewn, making the roads treacherous for motorists and pedestrians.
Repairs had been done in select stretches about two years ago, but the roads broke again, said Bidhannagar MLA Sujit Bose.
This time, the BMC has included a clause in the contract signed with agencies that won the bids for the repairs to improve the quality of work. “The roads must last at least five years. Contractors have to repair the roads on their own if these stretches break again within five years,” said Krishna Chakraborty, the mayor of Bidhannagar.
Several residents of Salt Lake said the repairs were “long overdue” and expressed hope that the repairs would last longer this time.
A resident of BH Block in Salt Lake said he saw the earthmovers scraping off the older layers from the road. “I cannot recall this kind of repairs being done in a very long time,” he said.
Immediate repairs will be undertaken in 14 of the 41 wards of the BMC. The 14 wards — 28 to 41 — where the repairs have either started or will begin shortly are all part of Salt Lake. The areas fall under Bose’s Assembly constituency.
The BMC has received ₹29.5 crore for the repairs, Bose had said earlier.
“We have asked the agencies who won the bids for the work to complete them within a month. They have said they might need ten more days,” Sujit Bose said on Monday.
While the KMDA will undertake repairs of the arterial roads like the one between the Karunamoyee crossing and the JK Saha bridge, the BMC will repair the roads inside the blocks. Around 22km of roads will be repaired in this phase, a BMC official said.