PWD hopes to complete new Majerhat Bridge by Puja next year
Kolkata: The state Public Works Department (PWD) is hopeful of completing the construction of Majerhat Bridge before Durga Puja in 2020.
"I can assure you that Majerhat Bridge will be completed before Durga Puja next year," said state PWD minister Aroop Biswas at the Street of Joy programme at Nalini Ranjan Avenue in New Alipore on Sunday. Biswas inaugurated the Fun Street event that was initiated by councillor of ward 81 Jui Biswas on Sunday morning.
It may be mentioned that a Haryana-based company, SP Singla Constructions Pvt Ltd, has been awarded the contract to build a bridge in place of the Majerhat Bridge that had caved in on September 4, 2018. The company has one year from the date of the start of construction to complete the project.
Two of the four spans of the damaged bridge situated over the railway tracks of the Sealdah-Budge Budge section have already been dismantled. The remaining two are expected to be pulled down by Tuesday morning with Eastern Railway resorting to a 36 hour power block between 5.05 pm on Sunday to 5.05 am on Tuesday for the dismantling work. Three Up and two Down trains in the Sealdah-Budge Budge-section were cancelled on Sunday, with seven pairs of trains and one pair of Naihati-Budge Budge local short terminating from New Alipore station on Sunday.
Ten pairs of local trains will remain cancelled on Monday and 19 pairs of trains in that section will short terminate at New Alipore station.
The ER ran three pairs of passenger specials between 6.00 pm to 10.50 pm on Sunday and will run nine pairs of trains between 6.00 am to 11.00 pm on the Brace Bridge-Budge Budge section.
"We want to demolish the old bridge and start work on the new bridge at the earliest," said a senior official of the PWD department. According to sources in the PWD department, the new four lane cable-stayed bridge will be more than half a kilometre long and 21.2 metre wide. The proposed height will be 7.5 metre, about 2 metre higher than the bridge that existed earlier.
It will start at the Burdwan Road-DH Road crossing in the north and end on NR Avenue in the south. Compared to the old one, the width will be 4 metre more and the bridge's central line will be shifted to the eastern side because of the alignment of the Joka-BBD Bag Metro.
