Displacement pain amidst transit triumph, pessimistic view over East-West Metro
Telegraph | 21 August 2025
The East-West Metro is ready to run its full course from Howrah Maidan to Sector V.
While the city cheers, some 80 families in Bowbazar who were rendered homeless because of subsidence in the Metro tunnel six years ago do not yet know when they will return home.
There are also many, in places like Durga Pithuri Lane and Shaykrapara Lane, who are still at home, worried that the tremors they felt every time a train passed under their houses during the trial run will get worse when the full service starts.
“We have no clue when our house will be rebuilt. It could be 2026, 2027 or any other year. The foundation work is yet to start, and we are counting days,” said Jayanata Seal, a resident of Durga Pithuri Lane.
Jayanta’s 175-year-old three-storey house collapsed on the night of August 31, 2019, during tunnel boring work on the Metro line.
The family of four, including Jayanta’s aged mother, has not returned to Bowbazar since.
“Our key documents, including Aadhaar cards, the house deed and voter cards, are not with us. They were buried under the rubble. Our furniture and valuables are all gone. The foundation work of our house is yet to start, and we are in a bad shape at our alternative accommodation in Phoolbagan,” Seal said.
Cracks appeared in houses for the first time in August 2019 after the tunnel-boring machine hit an aquifer. There were three subsequent incidents of subsidence — in May and October 2022, and again on September 6, 2024.
Several houses were damaged again. Some of these residents said cracks had started reappearing, leaving them on edge ahead of the formal launch of the Metro services beneath Bowbazar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to inaugurate the Sealdah-Esplanade section of the Green Line on Friday, when trains will run underneath the Bowbazar area, which bears the scars of repeated subsidence.
Two other Metro projects — the Hemanta Mukhopadhyay (Ruby Crossing)-Beleghata section of the Orange Line; and the Noapara- Jai Hind (airport) section of the Yellow Line — will be inaugurated on Friday by the Prime Minister.
Cracks that have emerged on pillars of the overground New Garia Metro station on the north-south corridor (Blue Line) 12 years after its construction, have heightened tension in parts of central Calcutta where most of the houses are old and their foundations shaky.
Subir Dutta, a resident of Durga Pituri Lane, said: “Engineers recruited by the Metro had built the pillars of the Kavi Subhash (New Garia) station, and they have now developed cracks. How do we know whether our houses wouldn’t collapse within years of this metro service between Sector V and Howrah Maidan?.”
Dutta’s house had developed cracks during the first subsidence on August 31, 2019. The next day, he left the house with his family for an alternative accommodation in Beleghata, almost six kilometres away from his Bowbazar house.
Dutta returned in January 2024 after his house was partly repaired. Almost a year later, in February, KMRC held the first “bhoomi puja” for rebuilding 24 houses in the subsidence-hit zone of Bowbazar.
“That was a farce. No work has started on rebuilding my house. It is great to know that the Metro will run underneath my house. But the KMRC has not bothered to find out how the displaced have been spending their days away from their ancestral houses,” said Sanjoy Sen, one of the displaced residents.
Sen had a three-storey house at 10/B Shyakrapara Lane. Two days before the cave-in in August 2019, KMRC officials asked him to move to a hotel on Creek Row. After three months, the family was shifted from the hotel to a two-room rented accommodation on Jadu Nath Dey Road in Bowbazar.
The Sens haven’t returned since.
According to KMRC officials, the rebuilding job started after necessary clearances from multiple agencies, including the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC).
“The work of reconstructing 23 houses that were demolished following the 2019 disaster has begun. A contractor has been awarded the job, and we hope to complete the construction by the end of 2027,” a senior KMRC official said.