Kolkata:Though Bidhannagar police on Saturday blocked traffic movement in front of Jal Vayu Vihar along Canal Road to facilitate construction of three piers of the New Garia-Aiport Metro corridor, RVNL, the agency implementing the project, couldn’t start work due to multiple telecommunication wires present underground. Snapping these wires would have cut off telecommunication link to the whole of Salt Lake.Sources said RVNL discovered that cables for the base transceiver station (BTS) of cellular services pass through the road where piling work for construction of piers 321, 322 and 323 is about to commence. TheMetro viaduct to be built on these piers would graze Jal Vayu Vihar at the EM Bypass-Salt Lake Bypass crossing. The moment RVNL starts digging, the cable lines will be damaged, jeopardizing telephone and internet connections to Salt Lake.Discovering the cables underneath, RVNL instantly withdrew its workers on Saturday and alerted Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation. “The existing cables lines can be snapped only when the BTS is transferred elsewhere. We will need one or two days to get the cellular service providers to shift the BTS,” an official explained. The message has been communicated to RVNL, which has decided to start work from Monday.Incidentally, the decision to stop all traffic movement on Canal Road — that houses the Salt Lake campus of Jadavpur University, apart from Jal Vayu Vihar and a hotel management training institute — has led to negative reactions from locals. “There is a big traffic mess in the offing. The Metro seems to be more hazardous than useful. Only in Kolkata does Metro construction take so much time to get done,” said local resident Asim Bhattacharya.Bidhannagar police, on their part, came up with a traffic advice, asking commuters on EM Bypass bound for New bridge, New Town and Sector V to use Broadway from Beliaghata and go via AMRI, and asking Bypass-bound vehicles moving along Canal Side Road to take a right from Lohapool and use Broadway.Ironically, RVNL has been lobbying hard to start the pier construction in front of Jal Vayu Vihar, the residents of which moved court opposing the construction in 2013. TOI has been publishing a series of reports on the impasse, the last one on the high court accepting a writ petition filed by the Jal Vayu Vihar residents.However, the more pressing concern for the 282 families at Jal Vayu Vihar is that the Metro viaduct would extend over their society office and almost graze their residential blocks. They fear vibration-related damage during construction.Railway sources, however, said the issue has been going on for far too long and construction couldn’t be deferred any more, especially since there was no legal bar against the work as such.

Stay updated with all the Kolkata Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.