Large sections of Bangur Avenue are in the throes of a dusty and noisy change. In every lane of the neighbourhood off VIP Road, there is a minimum of three or four houses that have been torn down to make way for multi-storeyed constructions, for either commercial or domestic use. According to a rough estimate, about 18-20 plots have had bulldozers rolling in in Ward 29 of South Dum Dum Municipality, which comprises Bangur Avenue.
“Over the last two years, the number of new constructions has gone up all of a sudden. So much so that the lane next to Bangur High School for Boys has turned into a dumping yard by the developers,” said Ajay Shah, a 50-year-old resident of Bangur Avenue Block D.
Soumyadeep Saha, 46, a businessman and a resident of Block B, reflects on his locality with nostalgia. “Most houses here looked like bungalows complete with gardens and they were mostly single or double-storeyed structures. These days a lot of people are moving out of Bangur and taking up residence in Rajarhat or New Town. They are fed up with the administration or the lack of it here. Earlier, permits for new apartments or buildings had to be attained by a builder manually from the municipality. Since October 31, 2025 the process has been made digital. You now have to apply for all building permits and building plan sanctions through a government website. We had hoped that the process would become transparent by this move and issuance of rampant permits would be stopped. But sadly, nothing has changed,” he alleged.
Tall towers
Some of the new constructions are exceptionally tall, which is creating its own set of problems for the neighbourhood.
A building coming up next to the house of the late poet Nirendranath Chakraborty is supposed to have 15 floors.
Such was the vibration created next door by the demolition of the four-storeyed property on the plot where the tall structure will come up that the boundary wall collapsed. The garage roof was damaged by falling debris. A portion of the first floor verandah ledge also fell after a recent storm.
“The Chakraborty house is old and shook while their piling work was going on. The builders did repair the wall and their garage within a few days. But there is a bigger issue that affects the residents at large. How could a building plan with 15 floors be sanctioned on a road that is only w20 feet wide?” a neighbour close to the family pointed out.
Another lady, staying in Block C, points to a 23-storeyed structure coming up by demolishing a bungalow on about 20 cottahs on the service lane parallel to VIP Road, near the Lake Town footbridge. “How can the civic body permit such a tall structure in a residential area? There is little or no free space left all around within the boundary wall. It feels like the building will fall on us as we walk by,” she exclaims. The service lane next to it, connecting Lake Town and Bangur Avenue, is also barely 25 feet wide.
Another structure of similar height is supposed to come up on a plot in Block D but is reportedly stalled by litigation.
Old-timers point out that most buildings in the area earlier were sanctioned up to a maximum of five floors.
Piled on pavements
Another major peeve is the use of the pavements by the builders as godowns for building materials not just for the adjacent construction site but of their other upcoming sites as well. “All the roads are blocked and the builders keep their materials on the roads. Nobody from the administration has bothered to look into this problem,” pointed out another resident, who did not wish to be named.
People believe that all the materials are not brought for immediate use by the builders. Some of them are just stored here, to be transported to other places on a daily basis. “They bring stone chips or sand in their jumbo-sized trucks at 3am or 4am and unload them over a length of time, creating a ruckus. This is a residential area and most people are sleeping at that time. Everyone gets disturbed because they make no effort whatsoever to keep things quiet. The noise of unloading disturbs especially senior citizens and small children, who wake up at the slightest disturbance. We can still bear it if we know that the construction site is in our lane. But it is quite clear that even though the materials are being dumped here, they are not entirely for local use. Every morning, a smaller truck comes and picks up some of the stone chips and sand to carry it to another site of work by the same builder. Why keep such a large stock here then and bother us many times more?” said Ajay Shah, of Block D.
Passing the buck
Local residents have met ward president Samya Biswas and local councillor Banasree Chatterjee several times to discuss the matter.
“Both Chatterjee and Biswas have claimed that they have no authority and cannot do anything about it. Our question is how is it that they occupy a post in the administration and spend year after year without any authority to do anything? Even for the smallest of issues, they need to take permission from Netai Dutta, vice-chairman of the municipality. Why are they occupying their posts then? Why is there no accountability towards the general public?” Shah continued.
Several officials at South Dum Dum Municipality, too, shrugged off responsibility. “Most of the plans that come to us are already pre-approved. We have no authority to cancel anything because all the plans are verified and approved by the vice-chairman. So, when the order comes from above, we have to abide by it,” one of them said.
When contacted, Dutta, the vice-chairman, who is known to be close to the local MLA and minister Sujit Bose, refused to take any questions on the topic. “We are in the middle of the election season. I’m busy with campaigns and cannot talk about this issue at this moment,” he told The Telegraph Salt Lake.
Former Trinamul councillor of the ward Mriganka Bhattacharya, who shifted to the BJP several years ago, said: “I know how Trinamul works. Everything is controlled by Bose and his men. Both the vice-chairman and the chairperson of South Dum Dum Municipality need to take permission from the MLA to do anything, even if it is something as minor as sanctioning a work permit. Also, a lot of people in Bangur Avenue, especially from the north Indian communities, do not vote for Trinamul. So, TMC party workers, holding positions in the civic body, seem to have decided that they would not extend any administrative help to people who do not vote for them. Hence, the entire ward reeks of official neglect.”
Dearth of cover
As per norms, a building that is being repaired or demolished needs to be covered with a net so that the premises next to it are not affected by falling debris or dust. Most builders start off with the protective green net covering the structure but soon it gets torn and there is no replacement.
Clogging drains
The building materials piled on the roadsides also block the gully pits nearby. “No one, not even the builder, bothers to clean the drains that get clogged owing to the slurry deposited from the building site. This blocks our only outlets for stormwater drainage, leading to water-logging. These days, monsoons last longer than usual. In case the rains arrive early, vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria are going to affect all residents. Each under-construction building also becomes an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes during the foundation laying stage when water in the pits stand for days,” said Sunil Sharma, a 65-year-old resident of Block D.