KMC budget focuses on roads, water in poll year

Kolkata: Months before the assembly polls, mayor Firhad Hakim on Friday placed a Rs 111 crore deficit budget, in which KMC stressed the development of the city's infrastructure, prioritising road improvement and cleanliness, water supply and drainage. For the first time, the expenditure is about to reach Rs 6,000 crore.With a promise to repair all major thoroughfares and arterial roads to offer citizens pothole-free rides, the KMC has increased the allocation to the roads department by 40% from last year's revised estimate to Rs 334 crore. Roads, which have turned accident-prone due to undulations, will also be taken care of. "Apart from repairing roads, we will re-lay some arterial roads to do away with the undulations, which are risky for motorists and bikers," said a roads department official, adding the focus was on E M Bypass, Diamond Harbour Road, James Long Sarani and the port area. The roads department plans to relay some other major roads —NSC Bose Road (Tollygunge), C R Avenue, APC Roy Road, Asutosh Mukherjee Road and Burdwan Road among them—with bituminous asphalt modified with waste plastic, while Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road will be re-laid with mechanised mastic. The department will also lay pavements with interlocking concrete blocks on some stretches, including James Long Sarani, MG Road in Haridevpur, Howrah bridge approach road and Park Circus connector.
Hiking the budget for the solid waste management department by 23%, KMC aims to make the city more environment-friendly. They plan to add to the 300-strong fleet of battery-operated hydraulic dumpers to strengthen waste collection. A major task for the civic body is to set up garbage-to-utility plants on a 73-hectare land in Dhapa. Also on the agenda is the construction of a common biomedical waste treatment and disposal facility.Modernisation of the city's water supply, sewerage and drainage system are also on the civic body's to-do list. "Besides finishing the water treatment plants and the booster pumping stations for the Jadavpur-Tollygunge belt, we will build a 40 million-gallon water treatment plant at Garden Reach for supply to lakhs in south Kolkata and surroundings," said Hakim. The water department allocation seems to have risen by 90% but officials said govt grants contributed majorly to augmenting facilities in 2025-26 that did not figure in budget. The KMC drainage department has received a 30% hike, which it plans to use to revamp its drainage pumping stations and finish the ones being built to check waterlogging.