Residents of Rajarhat who stay near two water bodies that were allegedly being filled at night first protested and then called up the local councillors on Thursday morning.
The councillors visited the spot, after which teams from the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) carried out an inspection and stopped the filling of the two ponds, located in the same neighbourhood.
Later, earth-moving machines were sent to remove the garbage that was dumped into the ponds.
A BMC official said the two ponds were being filled to make way for multi-storeyed buildings.
One of the ponds is in Ward 2 and the other is in Ward 3. Rahima Biwi Mondal, a mayoral council member of the BMC, is councillor of Ward 2. Aratrika Bhattacharjee is the councillor of Ward 3.
A civic official said residents stopped members of a syndicate involved in supplying construction materials and men hired by a developer from dumping construction waste into the ponds on Thursday morning.
“The residents told us that construction waste was dumped into the ponds at night. We, too, saw that rubble had been dumped into the ponds,” said the official.
Dolly Basu, who lives near one of the ponds, said they heard several men unloading rubble into the ponds at night.
“As it was dark, we did not step out. On Thursday morning, we saw some youths bringing in a truck loaded with construction waste. When they were about to dump the waste into the pond, we held a protest and called Rahima Biwi Mondal, our councillor,” said Basu.
Mondal told Metro that she went to the area and called a team of civic officials to inspect the site.
“Our team found that the water body was being filled illegally. We brought in earth movers to remove the waste,” Mondal said.
In Ward 3, too, councillor Bhattacharjee visited the pond along with officials and got the rubble removed from the water.
Mayor Krishna Chakraborty said they removed the construction waste dumped into the pond. Boards will be put up announcing that the ponds are registered water bodies and no construction activity is allowed there.
