Sewerage revamp for added areas

Several infrastructure projects for the city and its surrounding areas have been approved under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, state urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya said on Monday.

The projects include drainage system upgrade in Baranagar, dredging of the Bagjola canal, a water supply plant in Uluberia and a flyover in Kalyani.

“A Rs 255-crore project will be taken up for upgrading the network in the added areas of the city. Another Rs 60 crore will be spent on solid waste management across Kolkata,” the minister said after attending a meeting of the state-level steering committee on JNNURM.

Altogether, 262 infrastructure projects worth Rs 9,322 crore have been sanctioned under the scheme for the state.

The deadline for the projects is 2012. The minister said he would request the Centre to extend the time-limit.

The projects awaiting approval include flyovers on Raja Subodh Mullick Road and VIP Road, expansion of the road from Kamalgazi to Baruipur, on the southern fringes of the city, and a railway overbridge at Chandernagore.

For a JNNURM project related to road or sewerage, the Centre and the state pay 35 per cent each of the cost while the nodal agency chips in with the rest.

For a housing project under the scheme, the Centre bears half the cost, while the state and the beneficiary shoulder 30 and 20 per cent, respectively.

Of the 14 members of the steering committee, three skipped the meeting. They were Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee, Asansol mayor Tapas Banerjee and Howrah MP Ambica Banerjee, all from the Trinamool Congress.

“Ambica Banerjee could not attend the meeting as he was abroad,” said Bhattacharya. He did not reply when asked why the mayors stayed away. Chatterjee said he “was not informed about the meeting”.

Chandernagore mayor Ram Chakraborty, also from Trinamool, attended the meeting. “I came because the issue was development.”


The Telegraph Metro