Several pockets in New Town got waterlogged after a spell of rain on Friday.
Parts of the Major Arterial Road, which connects New Town with Salt Lake on one side and the airport on the other, remained under water for nearly an hour after the rain stopped.
The streets and lanes of multiple residential blocks in the township’s Action Area I, including BD, AB and AC, got waterlogged, too.
Anirban Dutta Choudhury, a resident of New Town’s Action Area III who was heading for Nagerbazar in northeast Kolkata, said his car had stalled multiple times while he tried to negotiate the flooded Major Arterial Road.
“I was greeted with a long waterlogged stretch almost as soon as I entered the Major Arterial Road after the Rabindra Tirtha intersection. My car stalled multiple times while crossing the stretch,” said Dutta Choudhury.
Rain gauges in Ultadanga and Dum Dum recorded 28mm and 30mm of rainfall, respectively, on Friday.
An engineer of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) said they had cleaned rainwater drainage channels as well as gully pits regularly. “Dumping of plastic waste into gully pits and drainage channels by the owner and staff of some pavement stalls pose a major challenge to us. Despite regular cleaning, the drains tend to choke up once fresh plastic items such as bags are dumped into it,” said the official.
Another official said backflow in the Bagjola and the feeder canals, the main drainage channels for New Town, led to flooding in some blocks.
Debashis Sen, chairman of NKDA, which provides civic services to the township, said senior engineers were out on the streets trying to solve the problem.
“We had received a high volume of rainfall in a short span of time, because of which it took some time for the water to drain out. We have decided to deploy teams once more to clean all gully pits and drainage channels,” said Sen.