Ajoynagar Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha

All major thoroughfares in Calcutta will be repaired before Puja.

Reality: Craters dot several roads in Salt Lake and Lake Town in the north, EM Bypass and its parallel service roads, Diamond Harbour Road.

Report card: The roads in Salt Lake and Lake Town have not seen repairs in a long time but the thoroughfares in the south were repaired a month ago. But the poor state of the roads shows the repairs were probably cosmetic patchwork.

Metro tours the city to check out the condition of roads:

Near CGO complex, Salt Lake Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Between EE and FF blocks, Salt Lake Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Salt Lake

The arterial roads in all three sectors of the township, including Sector I, II and III, are riddled with craters and potholes. Parts of Second Avenue opposite CF Block are crying for repairs as the blacktop has given way to huge craters, some of them spanning the entire width of the road.

The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has carried out patchwork repairs in front of Purta Bhavan and Bidhannagar North police station but they could not withstand the pressure of passing wheels and have given way to potholes.

At least a dozen large craters have developed on Third Avenue in Sector II, leading to the Karunamoyee bus stand from Sector V. The potholes not only slow down vehicles entering Salt Lake from the tech township but also put motorists and pedestrians at risk as cars have to swerve suddenly to avoid potholes after a stretch of good road.

Tapas Chatterjee, the deputy mayor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation and in charge of road repair, said the tenders for road repair have not been floated yet. “We will be inviting bids soon,” he said.

Work has been held up because the finance department has stopped release of funds for the road repairs carried out earlier by the civic body.

“E-tenders were not called in keeping with prescribed tender conditions and so the finance department has not released the funds. We have not been able to pay the contractors their dues,” an official said.

Sanjib Sinha Chaudhury the joint secretary of the Salt Lake Residents’ Welfare Association, said the roads in the township are at their worst this year. “I could not recall when they were this bad. The authorities must do something,” Chaudhury said.

Lake Town

Intermittent stretches of some roads in Lake Town are broken. Several streets inside the blocks are dotted with potholes.

“Although the road leading to Jessore Road from VIP Road is in a relatively better condition, the state of roads inside the blocks is bad,” said Piyush Agarwal, a resident.

An official of South Dum Dum Municipality said repairs will be carried out later this month.

Near Ruby Rotary Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

EM Bypass

The stretch of EM Bypass towards Science City, barely 50m from the Ruby crossing, is riddled with potholes of varying sizes, putting motorists at risk and slowing down traffic. The surface of the road has peeled off in some places, revealing stone chips and rocks underneath.

The service road between Ajoynagar and Hiland Park is dotted with craters, some of them quite large.

The Calcutta Metropolitan development Authority (CMDA) had started repairing broken stretches of EM Bypass towards the end of August after chief minister Mamata Banerjee pulled up the Calcutta Municipal Corporation for the poor condition of city roads.

Police officers had sent pictures of some affected stretches of the Bypass to the CMDA, which maintains the 18km thoroughfare, before writing to the urban development department and requesting immediate repairs.

A senior official of CMDA blamed the New Garia-Airport Metro construction and the ever-increasing volume of traffic on the Bypass. “The broken portions are adjacent to the Rail Vikas Nigam Limited construction area. The agency will be asked to repair the portion,” said the official.

Near Taratala Crossing Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha

DH Road

A portion of Diamond Harbour Road at Taratala crossing has at least two craters. One of them, near Sahapur Road that leads to New Alipore, has turned into a small ditch, nearly 3m wide. The portions around the crater have crumbled, too. The rest of the road is quite smooth and the crater appearing suddenly can prove dangerous for motorists.

Before Puja, the public works department had done patchwork on stretches of Diamond Harbour Road that were riddled with craters.

The public works department (PWD) has been concreting Diamond Harbour Road between Joka and Taratala over the past couple of years. A PWD engineer said only those portions of Diamond Harbour Road were being concreted that did not have any utility — water pipes, power, Internet and phone cables — under them.

A thorough repair of the artery, a key link between the city and South 24-Parganas, will be taken up soon, he said. “We were waiting for the festive season to get over because it is not possible to get traffic blocks during Puja. The collapse of Majerhat bridge also compounded our problems,” said the official.