Kolkata: 8 months after collapse, Vivekananda Road flyover to be razed

The flyover was one of the around dozen recommended by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) afer the erstwhile Left Front government sought the help of the Japanese government in the late 1980s to ease help traffic congestion in the city. With JICA committing economic packages to be routed through the Centre, the flyover projects began to be taken up one after the other, including the Vivekananda flyover sanctioned under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

Construction began on this flyover in 2009, after the then Left government awarded the contract for the 2.2-km project to IVRCL, a Kolkata-based engineering company, in February that year and set a deadline of 18 months, which was later extended several times. The TMC government, which came to power in 2011, had initially decided to complete the construction of the flyover after the collapse. “But the committee found that the entire design of the bridge is faulty. Initially, it had seemed that the design of the portion that collapsed was faulty. But this wasn’t the case,” said an official.

The committee has allegedly found that the IVCRL’s original design had been vetted within 24 hours at the time by a city-based university, said sources. The report also claimed that substandard material was used for construction and that the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) had faltered in supervision.

Sources said that once the Chief Minister gives the go-ahead, action is likely to be taken against at least “six engineers of KMDA” and the university that vetted the design. In March 2013, a JNNURM inspection report noted that “utility diversion and delay in receiving police permission” and “resistance from the local business community” continued to hamper the pace of the project.