KOLKATA: East-West
Metro’s second tunnel-boring machine (
TBM
), digging the east-bound tunnel is about to cross Grant Street and reach under 137
SN Banerjee Road
, a ramshackle building opposite the Kolkata Municipal Corporation headquarters.
A part of the building at the intersection of SN Banerjee Road and Grant Street was
evacuated
on Thursday. Around 20 residents of the building have been put up in a hotel on Central Avenue. Shops and business establishments housed in the crumbling structure were asked to remain closed for three days.
On April 20, the second TBM, nicknamed Urvi, started digging along SN Banerjee. It has taken more than a month to reach this far (around 300 metres from the Esplanade-SN Banerjee Road crossing). Urvi has covered the most critical structure on the eastern side of SN Banerjee Road so far. It’s the Bourne and Shephard building, which had to be evacuated.
The TBM’s passage through this wobbly structure had registered zero settlement. From there onwards, Urvi burrowed steadily crossed four more structures, crossed Motisil Street and burrowed through buildings like the Kolkata Mounted Police, again, without any settlement.
But engineers of Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), , are bracing themselves about the journey through the current address. “The interiors of the building, where people live, are in a precarious condition,” said an engineer. “Urvi will pass through this house and some very unsafe structures before passing through Elite Cinema,” he said.