Residents of AN Block, who have long been suffering from clogged and cratered roads, might soon get partial respite if the local civic body representative is to be believed. Streets across Salt Lake are in a sorry state of late but AN Block residents say they cannot even recall a time when their main road was in decent condition.
AN Block, in Sector V, is separated from Sector II’s AL Block by the Eastern Drainage Canal. The block hit the headlines a few years ago when the Saradha Group scam was exposed. The group’s office was in the Midland Park complex in this block.
The street in question is roughly 200m long and begins from the Swamiji statue towards the Wipro side and ends at a T-junction that leads to IAM college on the right and Nayapatti market on the left. Besides potholes, the stretch has multiple garages and abandoned cars lying on the sides, trucks parked, bricks, bamboo, and sand dumped. The road is also a favourite haunt of food delivery app bikers, who seem to wait here endlessly for orders, further reducing road space.
“I can’t recall the last time this road was repaired,” says Chanchal Bhattacharya, joint secretary of the Midland Park residents’ society. “It’s full of potholes that are difficult to drive past. The craters collect rainwater that breed mosquitoes and the streetlights don’t work.”
Sushil Kedia, resident of another complex on this stretch called Saltee Plaza, is at his wit’s end too. “Not only do the potholes reduce motorable road, but much of the remaining street is taken up by abandoned cars. During the Amphan cyclone some trees had fallen on these cars. They’ve removed the trees but the cars are still here more than three years later!”
The garage owners are sufferers too. “We’ve had this garage running for 30 years now and the street has been bad for most of the time,” said Md. Samu, who would not share the name of his garage. “Such roads can damage the axel and suspension of cars and we get many customers like this. Sometimes the authorities would do patchwork before the Pujas but this time there’s no sign.”
But he claimed he did not know about the abandoned cars. “Our customers pick up their cars once fixed,” he said.
Residents say repeated complaints to the local authorities bear no fruit. Now a Midland Park resident Debashis Sen Roy has written to MLA Sujit Bose and a Saltee Plaza resident Moloy Dutta is trying to organise a mass petition including stakeholders from all the plots on the street. “Not just residents, the IAM college is a bend away from this street and their students and teachers suffer too,” Dutta says.
Local councillor Prabir Sardar says he is aware of the problem. “The road needs to be repaired on an urgent basis and I have informed the corporation about it. The Metro authorities keep some construction material here too, because of which some of the drains get clogged. I am looking into all of this,” he said. “As for the abandoned cars, I have spoken to the traffic police to have them towed away. I am hoping for all this to be done before the Pujas.”
Write to saltlake@abp.in
