Five years since the subsidence at Bowbazar in 2019, which damaged several houses during the tunnel boring work for the East-West Metro, more than 80 families are yet to return to their homes.

The subsidence on August 31, 2019, had left 26 houses damaged beyond repair in a pocket of Bowbazar with many collapsing during the work conducted by the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC).

On Friday, several residents who moved out of their houses from that part of Bowbazar said they were unsure when their homes would be rebuilt.

“I had a three-storeyed house at 10/B Shyakrapara Lane. Two days before the cave-in August 2019, KMRC officials asked us to move to a hotel on Creek Row. I haven’t returned since,” said Sanjoy Sen, one of the displaced residents.

“KMRC officials promised to rebuild our house within a year-and-a-half,” he said.

After three months, the family was shifted from the hotel to a two-room rented accommodation on Jadu Nath Dey Road in Bowbazar.

Sen keeps revisiting Shyakrapara Lane, to the spot where the house once stood only to realise that the return would not be anytime soon.

“Do the KMRC officials know how it feels to stay out of one’s ancestral home and live in a small rented accommodation? The officials would say they are paying for the rent. But is that enough?” Sen asked.

“I don’t know when the house will be rebuilt. Returning to my home is like a dream.”

The same area in Bowbazar has seen three accidents, causing large-scale subsidence and collapse and cracks on many buildings, since August 31, 2019.

On May 11, 2022, the construction of a concrete structure to fill a gap — in the form of a retrieval shaft between the two tunnels of the Metro corridor — led to water leakage again.

On October 14, the same year, water seepage happened while constructing a cross passage to link the two tunnels, sparking panic.

“In 2019, KMRC officials said they will rebuild the house within two years. That deadline is yet to be met. I have been living out of my three-storeyed house for five years now and there’s no hint of hope about when I could return,” said Ashish Sen, one of the displaced residents from Shyakrapara Lane.

“It’s so painful, leaving one’s own house and living in a rented accommodation,” he said.

In February, the KMRC did a “bhoomi puja” at the subsidence site to mark the beginning of the construction of the first set of houses that collapsed in 2019.

The new homes would come up in a space with Bowbazar Street on the north and Hridaram Banerjee Lane on the south, officials had said.

“A construction company has won the tender for constructing the houses and we hope that the work will start at the earliest,” a senior KMRC official said. “All these would be stand-alone buildings.”

KMRC officials said the 800-metre stretch in Bowbazar where work had stopped in August 2019, is now nearing completion.

The tests for the signalling system are going on now. The target is to make the stretch operational by the beginning of 2025.

“Once the stretch is operational, the East-West line will be complete,” said the official.

Once completed, East-West or Green Line will connect Sector V with Howrah Maidan, a stretch of 16km, with a 500m stretch running under the Hooghly.

At present, East-West Metro is operational between Howrah Maidan and Esplanade and between Sealdah and Sector V.