Residents of dilapidated buildings in Kolkata's Bowbazar shifted as East-West Metro tunnelling work resumes

Residents of several dilapidated buildings at a section of the East West Metro corridor route have been temporarily shifted to hotels and guest houses, as underground tunnelling work for the rapid transport system resumed after five months, an official said here on Monday.

The residents of Bowbazar area in central Kolkata were shifted to ensure their safety since the buildings are very old, Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) General Manager (administration) A K Nandy said.

"It is a planned evacuation. We are taking every step very cautiously," he said.

Safety of the people living in dilapidated buildings - many of which were built over 120 years ago - of Bowbazar is a cause for concern, Leonard John Endicott, the head of a KMRC appointed international expert committee had said last week.

Nandy said the dilapidated buildings in the area will be strengthened by the KMRC, the executing agency for the project, as per protocol, and the residents who have been shifted to hotels and guest houses would be brought back after the tunnelling work gets over.

Full-fledged underground tunneling work resumed on Monday, more than five months after a tunnel boring machine (TBM) hit an aquifer on August 31 last year in Bowbazar area leading to severe ground subsidence and collapse of several buildings.

With that key machine damaged beyond repair in the accident, now the work will have to be completed with one TBM only. The underground tunnelling work is likely to take 10 more months to be completed, said Leonard John Endicott, the head of the international expert committee said.

The Calcutta High Court had on February 11 allowed resumption of tunnel-boring work for the East West corridor.

Accepting a report by IIT-Madras, the court had allowed KMRC to restart operations in Bowbazar, in consultation with the institute.

On February 13, the 4.88km-long first phase of the East-West Metro, connecting information technology hub of Sector V in Salt Lake with Yuva Bharati Krirangan stadium, got functional.

Inaugurating the service, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal had said the entire 16.5-km stretch of the corridor - from Sector V to Howrah Maidan - is likely to be ready in two years.

The East West Metro corridor was earlier scheduled to be completed by June, 2021.