Parts of the RG Kar hospital campus were waterlogged from Monday morning till afternoon and its immediate surroundings have been inundated since Sunday morning following a breach in a water pipe of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation.

The repair of the pipe has been scheduled for Saturday.

“Water supply from the Tallah tank to the entire north and central Calcutta and portions of south Calcutta and southern suburbs will be stopped at 9.30am on Saturday to facilitate the repair. The supply will resume on Sunday,” a civic engineer said.

Patients and doctors at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, and residents in the surrounding areas, had to wade through ankle-deep water. “The low-lying areas on the campus went under water. These include the stretches in front of the gynaecology ward and the administrative block,” said an official of the hospital.

A doctor said the stretches near the canteen and the anatomy building were waterlogged, too.

Pumps operated by the civic body could drain out water from the RG Kar campus in the afternoon, but the surrounding areas were still flooded.

Tarun Saha, the coordinator of borough I of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), which includes the area where RG Kar hospital is located, said the breach was noticed around 4am on Sunday.

Another stretch of Nilmoni Mitra Row Pictures sent by a resident

“We received information about the breach by 4.30am. Our team started work around 7am,” he said. “Water is gushing out through the leak. We have deployed pumps to drain out the water, but the pumps cannot be operated round the clock. Whenever we are switching off the pumps to give them some respite, water is again accumulating,” said Saha.

A resident of Nilmoni Mitra Row, behind RG Kar hospital, said Sarkar Bagan and the area near Tallah railway station had been under ankle-deep water since Sunday.

An official of the civic body said a breach in a 60-inch-diameter pipe under Nilmoni Mitra Row had resulted in the waterlogging. The pipe, known as the Tallah-Auckland Square transmission main, supplies water from the Tallah reservoir to various booster pumping stations in the city, via the Auckland Square booster pumping station near Park Street.

Repairs could not be undertaken immediately because CMC engineers suspect the leak had developed about 25ft below the road.

“There is a pit, where the breach happened. The pit has to be cleared of all accumulated water before repairs can begin,” said an engineer.

“We have to stop supply from the reservoir and empty the transmission line on both sides of the point of the leak. Otherwise, water from both sides will rush towards the point, which is at a lower altitude. Creating various points through which the line will be emptied will take some time. So, we have scheduled the repair for Saturday,” the engineer said.