Residents of dilapidated buildings shifted as E-W Metro

Residents of several dilapidated buildings at a section of the East West Metro corridor route

have been temporarily shifted to hotels and guest houses, as underground tunnelling work for the rapid transport system

resumed after five months, an official said here on Monday. The residents of Bowbazar area in central Kolkata were

shifted to ensure their safety since the buildings are very old, Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) General Manager

(administration) A K Nandy said. "It is a planned evacuation. We are taking every step

very cautiously," he said. Safety of the people living in dilapidated buildings -

many of which were built over 120 years ago - of Bowbazar is a cause for concern, Leonard John Endicott, the head of a KMRC

appointed international expert committee had said last week. Nandy said the dilapidated buildings in the area will

be strengthened by the KMRC, the executing agency for the project, as per protocol, and the residents who have been

shifted to hotels and guest houses would be brought back after the tunnelling work gets over.

Full-fledged underground tunneling work resumed on Monday, more than five months after a tunnel boring machine

(TBM) hit an aquifer on August 31 last year in Bowbazar area leading to severe ground subsidence and collapse of several

buildings. With that key machine damaged beyond repair in the

accident, now the work will have to be completed with one TBM only. The underground tunnelling work is likely to take 10

more months to be completed, said Leonard John Endicott, the head of the international expert committee said.

The Calcutta High Court had on February 11 allowed resumption of tunnel-boring work for the East West corridor.

Accepting a report by IIT-Madras, the court had allowed KMRC to restart operations in Bowbazar, in

consultation with the institute. On February 13, the 4.88km-long first phase of the

East-West Metro, connecting information technology hub of Sector V in Salt Lake with Yuva Bharati Krirangan stadium, got

functional. Inaugurating the service, Railway Minister Piyush

Goyal had said the entire 16.5-km stretch of the corridor - from Sector V to Howrah Maidan - is likely to be ready in two

years. The East West Metro corridor was earlier scheduled to

be completed by June, 2021.