Howrah has had no elected civic body since 2018 and it is evident in the civic services or the complete lack of them.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee reprimanded the civic authorities of Howrah at a recent meeting.

Even that has failed to bring in change.

Long periods of waterlogging, garbage overflowing from bins and strewn across arterial roads that are broken on many stretches are commonplace in Calcutta’s twin city.

Almost all the ills of Howrah were evident in a single neighbourhood where a young woman died on Thursday night after she was electrocuted on a waterlogged road.

The absence of elected representatives has worsened the situation. Councillors are known to pester officials as well as political bosses for civic work in their wards. That initiative has disappeared from Howrah.

A schoolgirl wades through a waterlogged stretch of Salkia. Howrah, on Friday

When Metro visited Bhairab Ghatak Lane on Friday, there was shin-deep water. The manholes had been opened to drain out the water.

Residents complained that an hour’s rain led to waterlogging in this area, Tantipara, in Salkia. “The water takes three to four days to recede if there is no rain during this time. If there is more rain, there is no guarantee when the water will recede,” said Kunal Singh, a resident.

Cleaning of the drains in the neighbourhood started three or four days ago, well into the monsoon. Singh said the waste picked up from the drains was kept on the roadside and had not been cleared.

A senior official of the state government said the tenure of the last elected body of Howrah Municipal Corporation ended in December 2018. There has been no election to the Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC) after 2013.

A dispute over where Bally should be is at the root of the impasse.

The state government wants to create a separate Bally Municipality carving the area out of the HMC, but it led to dispute with Raj Bhavan that also delayed the elections, said a state government official.

Sources said some internal bickering of the Trinamool Congress is also to blame for the delay in holding elections. The party apprehended trouble in ticket distribution and kept delaying the election, a party source said.

Bally Municipality was originally an independent municipality that was merged with the HMC in 2015. The Trinamool Congress government then decided to demerge Bally and again create a municipality.

Sources said there were plans to hold the elections to the HMC later this year.

State municipal affairs and urban development minister Firhad Hakim told this newspaper on Friday: “We could not hold the elections because the governor did not agree to sign a bill to create Bally as a separate municipality. Otherwise, the plan was to have the elections of Howrah along with Calcutta (Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections) in 2021.”

Dirty water accumulated on the side of a road in Howrah's Salkia on Friday afternoon.

Hakim admitted that the absence of an elected board does affect the affairs of a civic body. “I have spoken with the chairperson of the board of administrators of the HMC and told him that he should form teams that go out to find the problems in each of the wards.”

Sujoy Chakravarty, the chairperson of the board of administrators of HMC, blamed the model code of conduct for the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year for the civic mess.

“We are working to improve the drainage there.... We were late to start because of the model code of conduct in place for the Lok Sabha elections,” he said.

State government officials said civic work like cleaning drains could be done while the model code was in place.

In a meeting with senior state officials, police and heads of municipalities and municipal corporations on June 24, Mamata had particularly pointed out the poor state of civic services in Howrah.