Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Thursday asked cable operators to resume the work of removing defunct overhead cables that had started on some select roads but had not continued across the city.
The operators had begun removing defunct cables from roads like the Kasba connector in south Kolkata. They had started taking overhead cables underground along Harish Mukherjee Road, through ducts that the civic body had built. Then, as the KMC elections approached, the pressure from the civic body disappeared around October last year.
No work on the removal of overhead cables progressed since then.
Thursday was the first time after the new board took charge on December 28 that the KMC met the cable operators, the multi-system operators and internet service providers.
The operators on Thursday promised the KMC they would complete the work of laying underground cables along Harish Mukherjee Road in south Kolkata within 10 days.
“We have told the operators to remove the overhead cables. They have been told multiple times earlier also to remove the defunct overhead cables, but they do not act. We have told them that we will start disconnecting the lines,” said Sandip Bakshi, the mayoral council in charge of the KMC’s lighting department.
Mayor Firhad Hakim chaired the meeting.
Tapash Das, a cable operator who was present at Thursday’s meeting, said the operators have already worked out a plan to resume the removal of defunct overhead cables between Tollygunge in the south and Shyambazar in north Kolkata.
“The running lines have been tagged already. We had asked cable operators, multi-system operators and internet service providers to identify and tag their running lines along this route. The ones that have not been tagged will be snipped and removed as they are defunct,” said Das, a joint secretary of the All Bengal Cable Operators United Forum.
Bakshi said that Hakim told the operators that they have to apply to the KMC to use the poles of the civic body around which they tie the cables to take them from one place to another. “The cable operators have been using our poles for many days. The mayor told them that they have to apply to us so that they can continue using the poles of the KMC,” he said.