KOLKATA: As if the refusal of the owner of an eatery to part with its parking lot were not enough, the height mismatch of EM Bypass and the parking area has turned out to be a bigger stumbling block for the Airport-New Garia Metro link. According to sources, the height of the parking lot needs to be raised by 2m to build the service road and merge it with EM Bypass.Local councillor Jiban Saha, the owner of Byepass Dhaba, had refused to make way for a 12m service road, which is needed to take the traffic load off EM Bypass for constructing four Metro piers. During a joint inspection carried out by Kolkata Police’s traffic department, Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), the implementing agency of the Metro project, and Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), the custodian of EM Bypass, the layout of the service road was shown to the eatery’s owner. It showed that a 2m-high retaining wall must be constructed to match the height of EM Bypass right in front of the restaurant, which has come up on a wetland and is, therefore, at a level much lower than the main carriageway.“The eatery owner told us to reposition the service road northwards, away from the restaurant. If the service road is built right next to it, the restaurant will be flooded during monsoon and thus lose out on business. But the service road has to come up at this location since the carriageway has to be blocked here for the construction of four Metro piers,” a KMDA official said.The layout of the service road had been cleared by KMDA and Kolkata Police’s traffic department more than a year ago. But no headway has been made for its construction. “Without the service road for traffic diversion, the stretch of EM Bypass where the four piers will come up can’t be blocked,” a traffic official said on Monday.KMDA officials are planning to meet the owner of Byepass Dhaba once again to try and reason with him about the importance of the 32km link. The 600 sqm land is not only needed for the service road to divert north-bound traffic but also for the EM Bypass widening project.Repeated calls and messages to Saha yielded no response. Earlier, he had conceded to be a part of the spot inspection. But he denied having received any official letter to part with the parking lot, which is built on land vested with the government.Metro Railway isn’t supposed to handle encroachment. And KMDA is in a fix, figuring out how to “officially” write to a political representative for freeing up the land. “Either the police handles this or it is taken up politically,” a KMDA official iterated. As of now, the agency is thinking of trying and reasoning with the councillor once again.

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