The distance between the Ruby crossing on EM Bypass and the Siemens office on the Ruby-Rashbehari Avenue connector is barely a kilometre. But the mass of defunct overhead cables on this stretch was about 50km-long — about the distance between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour.

A team of cable operators has been snipping dead cables between Ruby and Gariahat since Tuesday, after being prodded by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. The operators said 50 of the 100 overhead cables on the stretch were defunct.

“We snipped the defunct cables and have kept them on the median divider. The CMC will remove them,” said Tapash Das, the joint convenor of the All Bengal Cable Television and Broadband Operators United Forum.

“The distance we have covered is roughly 1km. The number of defunct cables on the whole stretch is 50. Taken together, the length of cables we brought down in the last four days would be 50km,” he said.

Das said several cable operators met Firhad Hakim, the chairperson of the CMC’s board of administrators, on December 21. Hakim asked them to remove the dead cables on the stretch between Ruby and Gariahat as a pilot project.

The CMC is providing logistical support to the cable operators who have deployed their staff to remove the wires. A senior engineer of the CMC’s electricity department said they had given two hydraulic ladders for the workers to reach the point where the cables are tied to a pole and snip the defunct ones.

“Our solid waste management department will remove the defunct cables that are snipped and brought down,” the senior engineer said.

The Telegraph has reported several times how the mesh of cables hanging overhead presents an ugly picture and highlighted the danger they pose to pedestrians and motorists travelling under them. In many places, the cables hang very close to the ground.

Thousands of trees and electrical poles were uprooted in the city during Cyclone Amphan in May last year. The weight of the cables was blamed for the poles and trees toppling in the storm.

The dead cables include Internet lines, lines of multi-system operators, cables of companies that have shut down and telephone lines, Das said.

The cable operators forum could not give a deadline for removal of all defunct cables on the Ruby-Gariahat stretch. “It is taking a lot of time because the defunct ones are tied and twisted around the live lines,” one operator said.

A similar pilot project had been taken up in Alipore and on Harish Mukherjee Road earlier.