Trees planted along boulevards and medium dividers in Salt Lake are being pruned to prevent them from tipping over during squalls and to ensure that their canopies don't mask streetlights.
But in the process cables wrapped around their branches are now strewn across roads and walkways making them extremely risky for pedestrians and motorists alike.
There have multiple fatalities across the city in the past few years owing to accidents caused by the cables lying on the road or clumped up on streetlights and guardrails.
On Tuesday, (August 1) The Telegraph saw bundles of snipped and dud cables lying on roads, median dividers and pavements in many places across all three sectors of the township.
The cables that were generally back in colour blend perfectly with the blacktop of the roads and are not visible from a distance. Unable to stop them, most two-wheeler riders swerve at the last minute to avoid riding over them or hitting them as they hung low over the roads.
Most of the trees that have been pruned by the teams of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation are planted along median dividers and boulevards and the cables now lie on some of the township's main thoroughfares.
Cables and pieces of branches lay strewn on a stretch of the Seventh Cross Road that links Karunamoyee bus stand to Ultadanga.
On Broadway — that connects Salt Lake with EM Bypass — multiple stretches had wires sticking out on the road.
Here clumps of wires looped around lamp posts were jutting out into the main thoroughfare.
Second Avenue as well as First Avenue, both arterial roads that cut through the township, had several stretches where cables were lying on the entire flank of the roads as well as the walkways along them.
A bunch of coiled wires were spotted sticking from the median divider and onto the road near the Purta Bhavan island close to CG block.
A senior official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation said that tree trimming was necessary as many places were plunging into darkness despite working streetlights because of the shadow cast by the canopies of the trees.
"The operators who string up these cables don't have permission to string them on trees," said one civic official.
Across Kolkata, clumps of wires are strung up on trees, street furniture, and guardrails without any check.
New Town is the only part of Kolkata that has underground ducts for broadband and internet cables that operators have to use. However there, too, in some areas cables are being strung up on trees.
"Some people are illegally stringing up these cables and we are going to take strict action against them. We have already snipped off many cables that had been strung up illegally," an official of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) said.
