86 buildings along 1.6km stretch to be vacated for East-West tunnelling

KOLKATA: Eighty or more unsteady houses along SN Banerjee Road, Nirmal Chandra Street and Raja Subodh Mullick Square may be temporarily evacuated — more than 1,200 will be relocated in the process — in the first phase to facilitate the giant tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to burrow under congested central Kolkata to complete tunnelling of the East-West Metro corridor.
Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), the agency implementing the Howrah Maidan-Sector V link, doesn’t have access to study the condition of all structures identified on the TBMs’ ‘influence zone’. So it undertook a phased building condition survey (BCS). Results of the first BCS, covering 1.6km between SN Banerjee Road and Raja Subodh Mullick Square (where East-West’s ventilation shaft is being built), reveals 84 “very critical to negligibly critical” buildings among the 224 lined up on both sides in the ‘influence zone’.

Two more weak buildings couldn’t be studied because the owners refused to let KMRC in. The 86 buildings are right on the TBMs’ alignment from SN Banerjee Road to Raja Subodh Mullick Square and must therefore be protected and evacuated.
The most critical of the lot is Futnani Chambers on 6A SN Banerjee Road. Classified “very critical”, it is the sole entrant in this category, being the most hazardous. Not all buildings are really threatening to fall apart, admitted officials, but KMRC is not taking a chance and would like to have most, if not all, structures vacated while the TBMs bore along. So far, a list of 1,234 persons have been prepared for the temporary relocation.
Futnani Chambers alone has more than 150 commercial and residential occupants who will have to stay out of their premises for about a fortnight to allow the west-bound TBM — Chandi — to pass.
“The tunnelling will take place around 15m-20m below the ground. Most of the shocks will be absorbed. But we are keeping our fingers crossed. We wonder if any TBM has ever traversed such a tricky stretch in India or elsewhere,” said an engineer.
The TBMs will operate like moving factories as they travel beneath the buildings, and thus create a turbulence that’s negligible if the structures are in good condition. Several of those on SN Banerjee Road and Nirmal Chandra Street are not. Some, like the one on 1A SN Banerjee Road, had been declared “condemned” by Kolkata Municipal Corporation. But the owner has failed to empty and repair the property occupied by three offices. Then there are iconic structures like the Metropolitan Building, the once 20th Century Fox-owned Elite Cinema, and the building where the heritage photography studio Bourne & Shepherd operated from, not to forget BC Ray’s home.