January
• From January 4, East-West Metro commuters were able to purchase paper-based QR code tickets from Karunamoyee and Central Park Metro stations. The facility had already started at Sealdah, in October 2023, and then at Sector V before this. The facility is thus available along the stretch from Sealdah to Sector V.
• HP Ghosh Hospital, an 184-bed multispecialty hospital, was inaugurated by former cricketer Sourav Ganguly on January 7. The HB Block centre focuses on cardiology, neurology, spine, and orthopaedic treatment, but also has departments like ENT, paediatric, medicine, and gastroenterology. The non-profit hospital is backed by Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, managing director and chief executive officer of Bandhan Bank, and is named after his late father, Haripada Ghosh.
• An electric vehicle charging hub was inaugurated in the basement parking lot of Axis Mall on January 19. Run by Snap-E Cabs and Jio-bp, the hub has 125 charging stations and 15 fast charging ones capable of charging two vehicles at a time. The normal ones take seven to seven and half hours to charge a car while the fast-charge ones take about an hour to an hour and half.
• Bidhannagar Police started installing 94 CCTVs on the 1.5km VIP Road stretch near the airport, from January 10. The project cost Rs 1.7 crore, and included 89 high-end bullet cameras meant for long range viewing, four automatic number plate recognition cameras that can detect, capture and log licence plates and a pan-tilt-zoom camera.
• A statue of the valiant Mewar king Maharana Pratap was installed at CA Island on January 19, which was also the king’s 427th death anniversary. The statue was inaugurated by MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar in the Island that before this had a defunct fountain.
• Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital opened in the Primarc Square building on Broadway, on January 25. The chain is headquartered in Chennai, and was founded in 1957. The Salt Lake branch is its third in Calcutta. Minister of state for health Chandrima Bhattacharya was present at the inauguration.
• A public interest litigation (PIL) had been filed last year on the bus route 71 which originates from Howrah but instead of coming till Sector V, was turning around from Rajabazar. The bus owners claimed the Salt Lake leg of the route was unviable. The court’s verdict, dated January 18, 2024, directed all buses on the route to reach till Sector V. Despite the order the buses failed to complete its original route.
• The area under Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, that includes Salt Lake, was ranked seventh in dirtiness among cities having more than one lakh population. This result was published in a survey Swachh Survekshan 2023 conducted by the union housing and urban affairs ministry. The evaluation was based on eight parameters — door-to-door garbage collection, source segregation, waste generation versus processing, remediation of dumpsites, cleanliness of residential areas, market, water bodies and public toilets. Civic officials questioned the ranking.
• The re-employment contract of Debashis Sen, credited with the development of New Town as a Smart City, ended on January 31. He retired as managing director of Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco), chairman of NKDA and chairman of NKDA and Naba Diganta Industrial Development Authority (NDITA).
February
• More than two dozen full-grown trees were found felled at Nalban, the fishery project run and managed by the State Fisheries Development Corporation, on February 16. The authorities claimed it was done accidentally by the agency hired to drain out the fishery water and add fresh soil in the banks. They promised to plant five trees for each tree that got felled.
• Techno India Dama Hospital opened a palliative care unit on February 17. The wing promised to provide support to advanced stage cancer patients for whom curative treatment is no longer an option. They offer potent painkillers and tools for pain management like C-arm, interventional radiology and nerve block. The wing started with 10 beds in the first phase.
• Bidhannagar Mela (Utsav) takes place from February 20 to March 12, about two months after when it is usually held. It got delayed as the International Kolkata Book Fair was brought forward to start from January 18 to avoid a clash with Board examinations that had got rescheduled to avoid clashing with the Lok Sabha polls starting in April.
• Sanjay Bansal, the secretary of the backward classes welfare department and a resident of AL Block, was handed the additional charge of Hidco as managing director, in an order issued on February 19. In another order that came into force on February 24, Alapan Bandyopadhyay wa s named chairman of NKDA and NDITA. An IAS officer of the 1987 batch, Bandyopadhyay had retired in 2021 and was appointed as chief advisor to the chief minister for three years. Bidhannagar Mela (Utsav) takes place from February 20 to March 12, about two months after when it is usually held. It got delayed as the International Kolkata Book Fair was brought forward to start from January 18 to avoid a clash with Board examinations that had got rescheduled to avoid clashing with the Lok Sabha polls starting in April. á Sanjay Bansal, the secretary of the backward classes welfare department and a resident of AL Block, was handed the additional charge of Hidco as managing director, in an order issued on February 19. In another order that came into force on February 24, Alapan Bandyopadhyay wa s named chairman of NKDA and NDITA. An IAS officer of the 1987 batch, Bandyopadhyay had retired in 2021 and was appointed as chief advisor to the chief minister for three years.
March
• New Town is one of the 18 cities in the country to qualify for a share of a Rs 1,496 crore booty as part of the CITIIS 2.0 challenge, conceived by t h e Union housing and urban affairs ministry in collaboration with the French Development Agency (AFD), KfW Development Bank, the European Union and NIUA. The result was declared on March 4.
Under the plan, three integrated waste processing plants are being built in New Town. The project cost will come to Rs 172 crore. CITIIS 2.0 is the second phase of the City Investments To Innovate, Integrate and Sustain (CITIIS) programme that aims to drive investments into urban climate action through competitively selected projects, promoting a circular economy with focus on integrated waste management.
• CA Market became the first in the state to get cloth bag vending machines. Two such machines were inaugurated on March 11 . T h e machines were provided by the state pollution control board (PCB) in association with the state environment department and Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation. The bags were later provided in more markets and malls. The bags are available by inserting a Rs 10 coin or on payment through mobile wallet.
CA also became the first block market in Salt Lake to offer free shopping carts, in a bid to face up to online competition. The authorities plan to spread the service to other markets.
• Lake Town got a three-pump fire station on March 12. Built by the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, it has two fire tenders and two motorcyles, each of which can carry two firemen armed with foam and CO2 who can start the action even before a fire engine reaches. Before this, the nearest station was 10 minutes away in Dum Dum. The facility was inaugurated remotely by chief minister Mamata Banerjee and on the spot by fire and emergency services minister Sujit Bose.
• A VR (virtual reality) games parlour opens in Eco Park on March 12. The parlour has four VR-based games and eight arcade games. A VR car ride, for instance, takes a group of four on a roller-coaster ride with VR glasses on for five minutes, a VR helicopter ride has a chopper affixed to a spring which too offers a flying experience.
April
• New Town Amateur Sports Club was formed and anchored in the BC Block playground. The club starts cricket, football and karate coaching from April 1 and facilities are open to all.
• The first open-air Eid-ul-Fitr namaz in New Town took place at the fairground near Biswa Bangla Gate on April 11. Public namaz had started in the township last year at Action Area 1 community hall but space was limited. This year about 1,200 devotees attended the congregation, organised by New Town Citizens’ Fraternity.
• In a major vector-control initiative, the NKDA covered with concrete slabs parts of two peripheral drainage channels which carry stormwater drained f ro m t h e township to Bagjola or Kestopur canals. Covering them is a measure to deny mosquitoes a place to breed as the canals were becoming solid waste dumping zones, which are breeding zones for carriers of vector-borne diseases. One of the two canals identified for the pilot project was in Ward 27 of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, which shares a boundary with AC Block of New Town, behind the Coal India complex, and another was near Shukhobrishti in Action Area III. Work, which had started in November 2023, was completed in end-April.
May
• A 15-year-old swimmer, Elina Dutta Bhattacharyaa, passed out in Bidhannagar Municipal Sports Academy swimming pool, and died on May 7. The New Town School student had been swimming with her mother.
• New Town BF Block resident and CPM leader Saptarshi Deb moved court against temporary structures erected on government land which were being used as party offices by the ruling Trinamul Congress. The petition pointed to at least three structures — near Pride Plaza hotel, on a green verge near Bisarjan Ghat and on a road opposite Sukhobrishti. On May 10, the court ordered the government to take steps for “removal or demolition” of the unauthorised structures. While two have largely been dismantled, the third, near Bisarjan Ghat, still stands.
• Anwarul Azim Anar, a Bangladeshi Awami League MP, was murdered o n May 13 in an apartment in Sanjeeva Town, New Town. Later, police found human flesh in a se ptic tank in North 24-Parganas and bones on a canal bank in South 24-Parganas, DNA tests on which have recently revealed them to be Anar’s.
June
• In the Lok Sabha elections, TMC’s Barasat candidate Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar secured a ticket to the Parliament for the fourth consecutive term, with an increased lead over her nearest rival, Swapan Majumdar of BJP. But for the third time, TMC trailed in the Bidhannagar Assembly constituency. The Barasat Parliamentary seat comprises seven Assembly constituencies including Bidhannagar and Rajarhat New Town. Ghosh Dastidar conceded a lead of 11,156 in Bidhannagar, of which Salt Lake contributed 8,107 votes. The results were declared on June 4.
• Actor and Trinamul MLA Soham Chakraborty was caught on camera assaulting a cafe owner in New Town on June 7. The altercation was over car parking while Soham was shooting for a film at the cafe. The cafe owner Anirul Alam l o d g e d a police complaint and the MLA apologised later
• HA Block was hit by a spate of break-ins in June and July where thieves would target laptops, mobile phones, cash etc. Faulty streetlights were believed to be a major reason for criminals to be targeting the block. Though the police could recover some stolen items, and even arrest a thief, in other cases they couldn’t find a trail from CCTV footage as the streets were too dark.
• Days after the chief minister reprimanded civic bodies and the police for failing to control encroach on footpaths, the authorities cracked the whip. Illegal hawkers were evicted in Sector V, opposite and in the lane perpendicular to Salt Lake stadium as well as on the lane next to Nazrul Tirtha in New Town. Some of these stalls returned to the streets shortly afterwards.
August
• New Town came down on the streets in huge numbers at the Biswa Bangla Gate, as did the rest of Calcutta at key meeting points, in response to a call to reclaim the night on August 14, shortly after the rape and murder of the doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The call to spend Independence Dayeve “outside”, doing what she “wished to”, for the sake of women’s liberty came from Kestopur resident Rimjhim Sinha. Her call resonated with the masses and led to numerous protest marches all over.
• The August 18 derby between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan Super Giant was cancelled barely 2 4 hours before the Durand Cup match kick-off at the Salt Lake Stadium in view of the wave of protests sweeping the city and the police already stretched thin in controlling the crowds. The Bidhannagar Police claimed that they had specific inputs about a group of people who planned to hide in the crowd and instigate violence. As the news spread, a large number of football enthusiasts along with supporters of East Bengal, Mohun Bagan as well as Mohammedan Sporting clubs hit the streets in a rare show of solidarity. With them was Mohun Bagan captain Subhasish Bose, who said he was present in his personal capacity as a citizen, along with his wife.
• A plaque was installed on the building facade of P66, Lake Town Block B, where the late author Dr Balaichand Mukherji, better known as Banaphool, once lived. The plaque was installed on July 19, Banaphool’s 125th birth anniversary and was the initiative of Deshkal, a research centre specialising in the history of east Calcutta that had tied up with the local club Lake Town Progressive Youth Centre.
• The Sealdah-Kalyani Simanta Local, leaving Sealdah at 7.10pm, started to halt at Bidhannagar Road station from August 19. Eastern Railway will continue the additional temporary stoppage for six months on an experimental basis. The train now stops at Bidhannagar Road station, in Ultadanga at 7.17pm.
• Alliance Francaise du Bengale, the hub of French language and culture t h a t h a d so far been housed in Park Street, o p e n e d a second campus in Techno India University, S e c t o r V. The memorandum of understanding was signed, on August 29, as a way to renew the institute’s connection with the city on the eve of completing 85 years in Calcutta.
• FE Block resident Suhrita Paul was appointed the principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 12 in place of the tainted Sandip Ghosh, who was transferred to Calcutta National Medical College. But after a floor of the hospital was vandalised by a mob at midnight on August 15, medical students marched from the CGO Complex (which houses the CBI office) to Swasthya Bhavan, where a delegation met health department officials and demanded that the new principal be removed. As a concilliatory move, the government removed Paul from her post on August 21 and transferred her later to Barasat Government Medical College and Hospital.
• A localised epidemic of sorts began in Greenwood Nest in August with more than 150 residents falling sick and about 50 of them got hospitalised from water-borne diseases. The New Town complex is a joint venture between the Shrachi Group and West Bengal Housing Board and its water comes solely from underground sources. Residents approached the builders repeatedly for action, and a government team of health officers conducted tests and found the water there “not at all satisfactory.” Finally, in late October the builders began construction of a water treatment plant in the compound.
September
• Calcutta Heart Clinic & Hospital inaugurated a cath lab on September 8. The date marked the beginning of the year-long golden jubilee celebration of the society that runs the Sector III hospital. They also announced a second campus on a three-bigha plot in the Kolkata Leather Complex thana area that should be up in two or three years.
• Agitating junior doctors held a sit-in demonstration on the road from September 10 for 11 days outside Swasthya Bhavan, the state health department headquarters, seeking a clean-up of the system and suspension of key officials who they held responsible for the situation at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. Common people poured in with support, bringing food and essentials for the protestors. On September 14, the chief minister paid a surprise visit to the protest site, calling this her last attempt to break the impasse and urging them to return to work. The 43-day ceasework ended on September 21 with a march to the CBI office at the CGO complex after the state government accepted several of their demands.
October
• Residents of several highrises in New Town faced garbage collection problems for some days in end-October. This was due to an issue of offloading at the Dhapa dumping ground, where garbage trucks from New Town, Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) area, Sector V, Calcutta Municipal Corporation and other areas head. With so many vehicles coming in, there was subsidence in one spot and when NKDA trucks were asked to dump their garbage along with BMC, they got into arguments over whose vehicle would get priority at the designated site. The matter was eventually resolved.
• Bhabatosh Sutar, one of the biggest names in Puja art, took charge of the idol and Puja pandal in AK Block, marking his maiden foray into the township. He presented a striking symphony of the sound of rainfall, using a computer-programmed shower to create pitter patter on a variety of utensils, which at times became as loud as the beat of dhak. The puja promulgated a message of water conservation, with the main sculpture being a girl, trying to store rain on her outstretched palms, who dwarfed the goddess painted on pitchers underneath. The puja drew possibly the biggest crowd in Salt Lake, won major awards but also offended some residents by the artistic liberties taken with the deity’s conventional iconography.
• Three pujas were selected from Salt Lake — FD Block, AK Block and IB Block — to the state government’s immersion carnival. But AK Block did not have an idol to immerse as it was pinned to the wall. So it was hosed down at the pandal itself, marking a first in eco-friendly immersion in the township. Idols of the other two blocks drove down Red Road on October 15 . This was IB Block’s debut in the carnival in its 38th year celebration.
November
• India’s first renewable energy museum, housed within the Solar Dome in Eco Park, opened on November 5. A joint initiative of Hidcoand West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited, the dome is built on 2.89 acres, stands at aheight of 27m and is fitted with 1,986solar panels that can produce up to 180KW electricity to power the internal lighting of the facility.
The museum is dedicated to creating awareness on the climate crisis, and there are attractions like a smart electric vehicle prototype on display as a vehicle of the future. A humanoid robot that speaks to welcome visitors and brief them on the exhibits.
• A government-run diagnostic service for pets was started in November. The West Bengal Livestock Development Corporation, a state government undertaking at LBBlock in Salt Lake, engaged its unit at Kalyani to conduct the tests. Blood and stool samples have to be submitted through home visits or at collection points in LB Block and Barasat. The service is being provided by West Bengal Livestock Development Corporation in collaboration with a private pet care company, Onpets.
December
• IT major Infosys’s first development centre in the state was officially inaugurated by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on December 18. Land for the project, near Arts Acre in New Town, had been acquired during the Left Front regime and Banerjee had laid the foundation stone for the project in August 2018. Spread over 3.2 lakh sq ft and with an investment of over Rs 426 crore, the facility can accommodate 4,000 employees in a hybrid working model.
• Hidco gets a new MD in Shashank Sethi, replacing Sanjay Bansal who was holding the post as additional charge, on December 18. Sethi was earlier the managing director of West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation. He will report to Hidco vice-chairman H.K. Dwivedi.