A crematorium with four electric pyres will come up in New Town within a few weeks, an official of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) said.

A 2-acre plot in Action Area ID, near Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute's New Town campus, has been earmarked for the crematorium, which for now will be reserved for Covid victims.

According to the official, the plot has been chosen keeping in mind that there are no large gated communities or housing cooperative societies nearby and the area largely comprises empty fields.

“The crematorium will have four electric pyres, which will be operational simultaneously. There will also be a mortuary on the plot, which is adjacent to a small feeder canal of the Bagjola canal,” the official said.

The NKDA has submitted a detailed project report for the crematorium to the state government for approval.

“The facility will have high chimney stacks and other pollution control devices.”

NKDA chairman Debashis Sen said work on setting up the crematorium would start as soon as they get the state government’s nod.

“We want to build this facility at the earliest. This will be the first crematorium in New Town and we want to make it a place where every need will be taken care of through a single-window system. People don’t have to go here and there looking for things required during the last rites of a person,” said Sen.

The facility has been conceived as bodies of Covid-19 victims from various hospitals in New Town and adjoining areas such as Salt Lake and Rajarhat are being sent to crematoriums in far-off places such as Gobardanga and Naihati in North 24-Parganas.

“This is causing huge delays as most of these crematoriums are getting a large number of bodies from all across the city as well as the fringes. On most days, hearses are forced to queue up in front of these facilities and the family members get stuck for long hours before they can perform the last rites. It is quite a traumatic experience and hence this crematorium is being built,” said another senior official of the NKDA.

The Telegraph had on May 10 reported that the body of an 85-year-old woman, who had tested positive for Covid-19, remained in her flat at Karunamoyee Housing Estate in Salt Lake for at least 19 hours before the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation removed it for cremation.

Corporation officials had said the reason for the delay was crematoriums were chock-a-block with bodies.

Similar cases have been reported from Bangur as well as parts of Dum Dum and Rajarhat over the past few weeks, another official of the Bidhannagar civic body said.