KOLKATA: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has embarked on a project to identify and illuminate several "dark spots" in the city in order to make it safer for residents, especially women.
The civic body will dip into its share of the Nirbhaya Fund for the purpose. The fund, a Rs 100-crore corpus set up by the UPA government, was for the empowerment, safety and security of women, in memory of the 2012 Delhi gang-rape victim.
Globally, law-enforcement agencies have found an inverse correlation between amount of illumination and safety: the darker the stretch of a road, the more likely it is to be crime-prone - assaults, snatchings and sexual crime against women. Better illumination has nearly always caused a drop in crime rates.
While illumination in the city has improved, there are several dark pockets. A couple of months ago, a nurse was lucky to escape molestation around 11pm, on a poorly lit stretch of Broad Street, near Ballygunge Phari. Three bike-borne youths tried to grab her. It was sheer luck that her screams alerted a team of cops.
KMC sources said large areas of Ballygunge needed to be better lit. "We receive complaints of poor illumination, making some stretches crime-prone," said an official of the lighting department. "We have reason to worry about stretches of Garcha Road, Bondel Road, Palm Avenue, Broad Street, Mayfair Road, Gurusaday Road and Ballygunge Circular Road. We will thus overhaul streetlights there," he added.
Rs 1 crore sanctioned to upgrade street lighting
Some other areas that have been shortlisted, apart from the ones in Ballygunge, include the area near Dhakuria Lake, Burrabazar, the Maidan, the Behala-Kidderpore belt, Jadavpur and some areas off the EM Bypass. "We are on the verge of completing identifying the zones that are poorly lit," said a senior official of the lighting department. "Once that is over, we will float a tender. We hope to start work by another three months and wrap it up before October," he added.
"We have received Rs 1 crore as a preliminary fund for improving the street-lighting system in some city pockets. The project will be completed in phases," said another official.
At Ballygunge Place, local resident Juthika Biswas said she always feared for her safety while taking a stroll in the evening. Mayfair Road resident Prabal Sengupta said women felt unsafe after dark in the neighbourhood due to the poor lighting. On Gurusaday Road, overgrown trees with stooping branches cut out the light in sections and leave stretches badly lit.
In Behala, too, there are pockets in Parnasree and road stretches in boroughs XIII and XIV where the illumination leaves a lot to be desired.
Across north Kolkata, parts of KK Tagore Street have inadequate lighting. According to former deputy mayor Meenadevi Purohit, the problem in the area has accentuated after collapse of the Vivekananda Road flyover. There are also complaints from Hariram Goenka Street in Burrabazar and Bidhan Sarani near Bethune College. Similarly, Burrabazar, Strand Road and Chowringhee, will undergo an upgrade in lighting, an official said.
