Soon, house & street numbers for residences of Gopalpur-Rajarhat area

Kolkata: Hundreds of houses situated in Rajarhat-Gopalpur area which came under Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will soon get house and street numbers.

Two meetings to discuss the issue were held between senior officials of BMC and their counterparts in the Postal department. Postal department will start issuing house and street numbers soon.

The work will start from Borough I which is adjacent to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport.

Interestingly, the Left Front government which ruled over the state for 34 decades and the areas under Rajarhat-Gopalpur were said to be CPI(M) stronghold but the leaders never thought of giving house numbers and street numbers which could have helped the residents immensely.

It may be mentioned that the residents living in the area took seven decades since Independence to get house and street numbers.

As the houses do not have postal addresses, the residents faced immense difficulty in getting letters sent by ordinary post or even by speed posts and registered posts.

As there is no house number, on the envelope the names of the house owners or tenants are given and then on the space reserved for address is written for example, fourth house from the temple or majhar or "the sixth house from the waterbody" etc.

It became extremely difficult for the postmen to find out the address and handover the letters to the addressees. As a matter of fact, nobody knows how many important letters have been misplaced.

Things turned from bad to worse when most of the roads were full of potholes and

slushy and many postmen used to throw the letters in the garbage instead of handing them over to the proper addressee. Thus, getting a letter, however important it might be, depended on the sincerity of the postman.

Of the 41 wards of BMC, 27 are situated in Rajarhat-

Gopalpur area. After their inclusion in the BMC, Mayor Sabyasachi Dutta took an initiative to go for proper street numbers and house numbers of the premises.

Once completed, the residents staying in Rajarhat-Gopalpur area will breathe a sigh of relief for having proper house and street numbers.