A portion of a balcony of the Bowbazar market that stood above a footpath along BB Ganguly Street in central Kolkata collapsed around 8am on Friday. No one was injured.
The market, which is owned by a company, and the footpath surrounding it teem with people every morning. A tea stall and a store selling dairy products are situated next to where concrete chunks fell on Friday morning.
“The building has been declared as a dangerous structure by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, but there has been no repair or redevelopment because of a dispute between the owner and tenants,” said Tarak Debnath, who identified himself as manager of the company that owns the market.
“The dispute had reached court but the parties recently arrived at a consensus and the old structure will be pulled down and a new one erected in its place,” Debnath said.
There are over 538 stores and stalls in the market selling vegetables, fish, poultry products and grocery. The market building is about a century old, said Debnath.
The iron reinforcements were exposed in the portion from where concrete chunks collapsed. Standing on the pavement, one could see the sky through the gap created by the cave-in.
Iron reinforcements have been exposed at other places on the market building, too, because the plaster has worn off.
Mayor Firhad Hakim said on Friday that several privately run markets in the city were in a dilapidated condition. Jadu Babu’s Bazaar in Bhowanipore, too, is a poor state, he said.
“We have to frame a policy to properly regulate private markets in the city. The owners are not repairing the markets,” he said.
Even some markets run by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation are in a bad shape. A portion of concrete had collapsed recently in the Park Circus market, which is run by the KMC, leaving a few persons injured.