Most of the service road along Broadway in HA Block has been resembling a construction site for close to a month because of electrical cable laying work under way.

“According to information we have received, lines will be laid along the service lane by the Broadway till a substation near Purta Bhavan. The line will be possibly pushed under the road by microtunneling at the Netaji statue crossing and move towards Bidhannagar Municipal School in FE Block along the edge of Central Park. Though we do not encourage to digging up such crucial roads we had to agree as it involved a crucial upgrade of the Salt Lake stadium,” said Swapan Maitra, executive engineer, PWD and PHE, of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.

The project is of the West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Company. “We are building a 132KV sophisticated Gas Insulated Substation that will cater only to the stadium. It will be linked to a substation in Kasba and two in Salt Lake,” said Biswarup Mukherjee, the spokesperson for the state power utility. The work is expected to continue till December.

Residents staying on the service road are upset at difficulties they are having to face. “It’s been over three weeks. I am worried by all this digging snapping the root systems of the trees on the sidewalks. I wonder hoe many of them will get uprooted in the next storm,” said Banhisikha Choudhury as a family member negotiated the wheel to get their car out of the garage.

Sumita Sinha, who visits her parents staying on the road, cannot get her sedan in. “My octogenarian father had to walk all the way to the next lane to reach the car for his doctor’s appointment yesterday.”

July 17: Further up, a worker at work in a trench dug further up the street in the same block. Picture by Sudeshna Banerjee