North, Central Kolkata to get no water supply on March 30
Kolkata: Water supply in a large parts of North and Central Kolkata will be affected on Saturday with the Water Supply Department of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) undertaking an urgent work to facilitate construction of a ventilation shaft and emergency exit for the East-West Metro at Raja Subodh Mallick Square.
The filtered water supply from Tala and Palta will be stopped with effect from
10 am on Saturday and will be restored at 6.30 am on Sunday.
An official said this would affect water supply from Tala to a certain part of Bhowanipore and areas such as Shyambazar, Bowbazar, Beliaghata, Park Circus and Entally.
The civic body will have to extract an age-old underground water pipe at the intersection of Nirmal Chandra Street and Lenin Sarani for the ventilation shaft, which is meant to be used for rapid evacuation in case of an emergency. The pipe is 900 mm in diameter and is located 12 feet underground. The pipe that will be removed is defunct but supply pipes adjacent to it may be damaged while removal of the pipe. "So we do not want to take any risk," a senior official of the water supply department said.
An official of Kolkata Metro Railway Corporation Ltd, which is executing the East West Metro project, said they needed land for construction of the ventilation shaft at Subodh Mallick Square and several utility lines had come in the way. "We approached the civic body for removing the pipe and they have agreed to it," the official said.
Meanwhile, a team under the Digital India progamme of the central government visited the KMC on Tuesday to take stock of the digitalisation work progress of the latter. Municipal Commissioner and Joint Commissioner informed the team of the various steps that the KMC has taken in connection with this.
"The tax collection has been made online and several apps have been introduced in a stride towards digitalization. We have the parking app, the advertising app as well as the health app. The team was satisfied with our progress," as senior KMC official said.
