The deadline for the completion of the Tallah bridge in north Kolkata, which was to be ready by June-end, has been deferred to mid-September, PWD officials said.
The state government has told L&T, the company constructing the bridge, that it will not accept any further appeal for deferring the deadline, officials said.
In January, senior state government officials had said the bridge — which will be a key link between the city and places on the northern fringes such as Dunlop, Sodepur and Barrackpore — would be ready by end-April.
The deadline was later pushed to June-end as the third wave of Covid infections, driven by omicron, came in the way of availability of skilled workers.
Now, officials said, it has been further pushed to mid-September.
PWD officials attributed the delay to the process of welding six girders of the bridge, which are in the shape of bowstrings.
These girders will stand atop the railway tracks in Tallah, spanning a little over 150 metres in length and nine meters above the road surface.
Six such girders will cover the gap over the railway tracks.
Since girders will stand over railway tracks, the work of welding them has been assigned to railway contractors who are aware of the standards laid down by the Research Design and Standards Organisation, which functions under the railway ministry.
“Usually such bowstring girders are first brought to a site in pieces and then bolted at the joints. In Tallah, there will be no bolts. The entire structure is being welded at the site,” said a senior PWD official.
“Each girder has 80 components which were first assembled and then welded. This job requires specific skill sets and experience and is time consuming. Workers have to scale a height of around 9 metres and do the welding.”
Work for constructing the 750-metre-long Tallah bridge started in August 2020. L&T, which has been awarded Rs 350-crore contract, first pulled down the 60-year-old structure.
The company was given 21 months to build the new bridge.
The repeated postponements of the deadline has left commuters, who now take a circuitous route to reach Shyambazar from Dunlop, frustrated.
“There seems to be no end to the construction. What was earlier a 40-minute bus ride from Dunlop to Shyambazar now stretches beyond an hour, via Belgachhia,” said Shantanu Majumder, a Baranagar resident.
PWD officials learnt during a recent review that the approach to the bridge from either end will be ready by June.
“Work on completing the two approach roads was delayed after Kolkata Municipal Corporation decided to convert the surface drains to underground ones in this part of the city,” the officials said.