State to raze 'dangerous' part of Vivekananda Road flyover

Kolkata: The state government has decided to pull down the dangerous portion of Vivekananda Road flyover between Posta intersection and Ganesh Talkies.

The decision was taken at a high-level meeting which was attended by the senior officials of Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority

(KMDA), Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and Kolkata Police.

The officials have inspected the site. In three week's time, the team will come up with a date when the stretch on the flyover, that has been termed "dangerous", will be pulled down.

The team will have to consider various issues like whether the demolition work is going to affect the old buildings in the vicinity as many of them are more than a century old, if the residents of these buildings need to be evacuated then where are they going to be put up temporarily and so on. A 41-metre iron slab of the flyover fell on April 1, 2016. Twenty-six people died and 11 were injured in the incident.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had visited the site and supervised the debris cleaning operation herself.

In 2008, funds under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was disbursed for the construction of the flyover, which started in 2009 during the Left Front regime. The estimated cost of the project was Rs 168 crore in 2008 when it was commissioned. Ashok Bhattacharya was the then Urban Development minister when the proposal was cleared in Delhi.

When a portion of the flyover collapsed in 2016, around 75 percent of the construction of the bridge was completed. The construction of the flyover was mooted to ease Howrah-bound traffic movement from East Kolkata. From the very first day after the construction began, there had been movement to stop the process

because of its faulty design.

Development Employees Joint Action Committee had opposed its construction. After the construction of the flyover, it was found that many residents could not open the windows of their flats as the boundary wall of the structure was just two feet away from their buildings.

But, the Left Front government refused to listen to their objection and finally went ahead with the project.

As per the design of the flyover, the stretch on the road towards Howrah from the Vivekananda Road side was wider than the one coming from Howrah. Many engineers had also pointed out the faulty design.