Kolkata: Keys to newly built houses were handed over to residents of five buildings on Durga Pithuri Lane on Thursday, with the 10 families having spent seven years in rented addresses. The families had to be evacuated on Aug 31, 2019, when subsidence was reported during tunnelling work of East-West Metro.Waiting outside his new home with his sons and their families, Swapan Boral (72) said, “I am lucky to be able to see that a new building has been built for us. So many people have died with the pain of having been uprooted from their homes.” Though the houses have been rebuilt, a lot of work remains to make them liveable, said one of the men waiting there. A walk down the lane revealed many houses still under construction. Mintu Sen, a resident, said there were large cracks in his home. KMRCL, the implementing authority of East-West Metro, marked the cracks but was yet to undertake repairs. Calls to a senior KMRCL official went unanswered.Biswarup De, a former councillor of ward 48, said 52 houses needed rebuilding or extensive repairs and many others needed comparatively fewer repairs. Tapas Roy, MLA from Maniktala and a resident of the neighbourhood, blamed the erstwhile Trinamool govt for forcing the railways to change the alignment of East-West Metro. Roy said even his home was impacted by the subsidence.The first and most severe Bowbazar subsidence occurred on Aug 31, 2019, when East-West Metro tunnelling struck a water-bearing sand aquifer beneath Durga Pithuri Lane, triggering ground collapse that damaged dozens of houses and forced hundreds of residents to evacuate. A second incident followed on May 11, 2022, during the final breakthrough of the west-bound tunnel, when fresh water seepage led to cracks in several buildings and another evacuation. A third subsidence occurred on Oct 14, 2022, during construction of a cross-passage near Madan Dutta Lane, damaging more houses and prompting Metro authorities to revise their construction strategy.
