Scaffolding and other structures made of bamboo poles, which were set up along VIP Road before Durga Puja for the display of banners, are being dumped on pavements after removal.
The bamboo structures and banners have been stacked up on pavements along the arterial road, rendering them useless for commuters, who are forced to wait for buses and autorickshaws standing on the carriageway.
Both flanks of VIP Road, a thoroughfare that links the city with the airport and places on the northern fringes, had been lined with scaffolding.
The structures, which were around 20ft high and 5ft wide, jutted out into the service lanes of VIP Road. On Sunday, The Telegraph saw many of the structures had been taken down.
This newspaper reported on Sunday that gates and scaffolding that had been erected to display hoardings and banners before the Puja reduced the road space across the city, including VIP Road.
To add to the risks faced by the pedestrians and commuters on VIP Road, bamboo shafts, plywood poles with rusty nails sticking out and clumps of wire lay scattered on the pavements as well as the carriageway.
On Sunday, this newspaper spotted a number of commuters waiting for their buses standing in a service lane of VIP Road as the adjoining pavement was completely occupied by bamboo poles, torn banners and other objects.
A little ahead, a huge stack of hoardings had taken up the entire width of the pavement opposite Sreebhumi Sporting Club.
A traffic cop near the Dakshindari crossing said that with the pavements blocked by hoardings that had been taken down, pedestrians had no option but to court risk by walking down the carriageway.
VIP Road is a six-lane artery flanked by service lanes and with a median divider in the middle.
It has wide pavements on both sides but large stretches of the sidewalks near the Sreebhumi puja venue is out of bounds for pedestrians.
An engineer in the public works department, which maintains the road, said they have requested the agencies that put up the scaffolding and the banners to remove them from the pavements at the earliest.
“It will take some time because of the sheer number of such structures,” said the official.
