Residents of two districts on Thursday were forced to block roads to draw the administration’s attention to basics such as road and drainage woes.

Nearly 2,000 residents of Murshidabad’s Mahalandi, Sherpur, Sankarpur and Gatla villages on Thursday morning blocked the Haldia-Farakka state highway in Khargram, protesting the administration’s refusal to either reopen the nearby Jibanti-Sherpur highway or address people’s complaints.

The Jibanti-Sherpur highway in Kandi was closed indefinitely on June 3 by district authorities citing safety concerns over huge craters on the road.

The road was a vital thoroughfare for North Bengal-bound heavy vehicles and served around 1 lakh residents in the area, many involved in the construction material trade that relies on heavy vehicles.

“We pooled together in July and raised Rs 80 lakh to repair the road but the district authorities are still ignoring our pleas to reopen the road,” said a protester, referring to the Jibanti-Sherpur Road Repairing Committee formed by traders and residents.

District and PWD officials at the time said they were unaware of whether necessary permissions had been granted for this step, and that they would look into it.

Villagers block the state highway in Murshidabad on Thursday. Alamgir Hossain

Residents claim there has been no word from the administration since, although the road is ready.

District officials did not respond to the protest on Thursday. Agitators were forcibly removed by police around noon, clearing up the way for a 6km-long backlog of vehicles on the highway.

In a separate incident on Thursday, residents of wards 13 and 14 of Basirhat municipal town in North 24-Parganas blocked a local arterial road protesting the “lackadaisical approach” of civic authorities in repairing the drainage system.

Protesters alleged that poor drainage systems in the area had forced them to “live in a pool of water” for the past few days following heavy rainfall.

Around 10am in Sardarati area, residents forcibly dug up a part of the road and blocked it for two hours until police and local councillors responded.

Biswajit Debnath, a resident in the agitation, said: “The situation is unbearable. A 10minute-long spell of heavy rain turns the area into a pool of knee-deep water. A spate of incessant rain floods our homes and we are often forced to live with snakes and frogs.”

Resident Baidyanath Das said: “There is actually no existence of a drainage system in the two wards and the area remains inundated. Today (Thursday) we were compelled to dig up a stretch of the road as a mark of protest and clear a part of the waterlogged area. We have appealed to the local councillors and drawn the attention of the chairman of Basirhat Municipality, but unfortunately, they have offered us no help so far. If the authorities do not respond with action, we will be forced to launch a bigger movement.”

Basirhat municipality administrator Tapan Sarkar admitted the grievance was “genuine”. “But we have a paucity of funds. We are trying our best to take up the work as early as possible.”