Coils of cables spill onto the roads across Salt Lake and rusty lampposts hang at precariously low heights over them turning the roads and walkways into potential death traps.
Thousands of motorists and pedestrians risk life and limb every day as bundles of dud and snipped cables lie across the roads and walkways.
On Thursday, The Telegraph spotted dud cables lying across EM Bypass near the Chingrighata crossing, on pavements in Baguiati, Gariahat and the KC Das crossing at Esplanade.
In Salt Lake, this newspaper spotted a maze of wires lying on roads in all three sectors of the township.
Broadway Road, one of the busiest in Salt Lake, that connects Salt Lake with EM Bypass had wires and cables lying across the entire flank of the road in several places.
A 1-km stretch of Broadway Road from the SAI Complex to the EZCC Complex has a median divider that is strewn with wires. At several places, the wires jut out into the roads and have also managed to bend lampposts owing to their weight.
An officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate’s traffic wing said that accidents could take place in case any of these lampposts fell in the path of oncoming vehicles or even on a vehicle.
They could also cause injuries to pedestrians, he added.
“All the street light posts are made out of metal. In case they fall in the path of a vehicle, the driver will have no time to brake and an accident is nearly inevitable,” the officer said.
An engineer of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s lighting department said that cracks appear in a street pole because of the heavy cables hanging from the top.
“Bundles of cables are heavy. It is possible for a pole to break under its weight,” said the engineer.
An official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation’s street lighting department said each lamppost weighs around 70-85kg on average, minus the weight of the lighting systems.
A couple of street lights in CG Block near the Udayachal Tourist Lodge in Salt Lake are leaning dangerously over Second Avenue — an artery that leads to the Karunamoyee crossing.
Both of them had huge clusters of wires wrapped around them at the tops as well as at their bases.
In FD Block, lampposts with tangles of wires have tilted to one side.
On Canal Side Road beside the Eastern Drainage Canal that connects Salt Lake with EM Bypass at the Chingrighata intersection, at least seven lampposts have leaned over.
Multiple accidents have taken place across the city over the past couple of years because of the mess of cables lying on main roads.
But multi-service operators continue to tie cables on street furniture.
A senior official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation said that they will hold a meeting with cable operators soon to find out if an underground conduit system would be acceptable for them.