The Calcutta Municipal Corporation has started a drive to clean up gully pits in some of the more waterlogging-prone pockets of Calcutta.
The cleaning is done in two rounds — one by suction machines that guzzle the silt and another manually, where workers use hand tools and buckets to pick up the muck and silt.
On Monday, a team worked on Justice Chandra Madhab Road and Justice Dwarakanath Road in Bhowanipore. The gully pits along neighbouring Heyshyam Road, Doctor Rajendra Road, Lee Road and Woodburn Road will be cleaned, too, said Ashim Bose, the councillor of Ward 70, which covers parts of Bhowanipore.
On Tuesday, a few other select stretches were cleaned.
The drive will be undertaken along stretches of Central Avenue, Rabindra Sarani, SP Mukherjee Road, Asutosh Mukherjee Road, Pratapaditya Road and Lenin Sarani, among others, said a senior engineer of the sewerage and drainage department of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC).
The drive, however, will not be extended to Jadavpur, Behala and Kasba, parts of Calcutta that suffer from chronic waterlogging problems.
"We are focussing on arterial roads and some waterlogging-prone pockets," the engineer said.
The entire length of the selected arterial roads will not be part of the drive, it will cover only select stretches, prone to waterlogging.
The stretch between Jorasanko and Esplanade on Central Avenue will be cleaned. The Central Avenue-MG Road crossing, which gets drowned even after a brief spell of rain, will also be cleaned.
The intersection of SN Banerjee Road and Chowringhee Road will be included in the drive.
Gully pits along Eden Hospital Road, Pratapaditya Road and stretches of Bidhan Sarani and Sarat Bose Road will also be cleaned.
Metro reported last month about clogged gully pits across Calcutta. This newspaper also reported how the edges of multiple roads in Esplanade get flooded after a brief spell of rain.
A civic official had said then that the waterlogging along the edges could be caused by local blocks in drains.