The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will complete building an underground water supply network in a pocket of Kasba in two years, the Calcutta mayor said in response to a resident's complaint about water quality there.

The Kasba resident told the mayor he had heard the same promise in 2019 and 2021.

The conversation over the phone in the weekly Talk to Mayor programme reflected the water woes of several pockets of Calcutta and the KMC's many failed promises.

Mayor Firhad Hakim did not sound pleased with Kasba resident Debasish Sur's retort. Hakim said he "can't do magic" in response

"I had called up in 2019 and then again in 2021 and you said we would have to wait another two years.... It is 2024 and how long would we have to wait to get filtered drinking water?" Sur asked the mayor.

Hakim spoke to the director-general of the KMC's water supply department and replied that it would be another two years.

"I can't do magic. We have taken up a Rs 700-crore project to build an underground network...," Hakim said.

"The dependency on deep tube wells for water supply has to stop. But things don't happen overnight..."

Senior officials of the KMC's water supply department said the money would be spent on four heads — construction of water treatment plants, building capsule booster pumping stations, replacement of the old pipes in the existing network and construction of water reservoirs.

A majority of the funds will be spent on constructing two pumping stations at Dhalai Bridge near Garia and Dhapa, the official said.

These two pumping stations would be equipped to supply around 30 million gallons of potable water to areas on either side of EM Bypass, Tollygunge and Jadavpur.