The CESC Tunnel is situated under the

Hooghly River The Bhagirathi Hooghly River (Anglicized alternatively spelled ''Hoogli'' or ''Hugli'') or the 'Bhāgirathi-Hooghly', called the Ganga or the Kati-Ganga in mythological texts, is the eastern distributary of the Ganges River in West Bengal, Indi ...

Kolkata, West Bengal Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, commer ...

, India. This is the first

underwater tunnel An underwater tunnel is a tunnel which is partly or wholly constructed under the sea or a river. They are often used where building a bridge or operating a ferry link is unviable, or to provide competition or relief for existing bridges or ferry li ...

in Asia, completed in 1931. It is using for electric power transmission from

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

Howrah Howrah (, , alternatively spelled as Haora) is a city in the Indian state of West Bengal. Howrah is located on the western bank of the Hooghly River opposite its twin city of Kolkata. Administratively it lies within Howrah district, and is th ...

History

This tunnel was not made by modern

tunnel boring machine A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They may also be used for microtunneling. They can be designed to bore throu ...

. It was made by simple tools like

spade A spade is a tool primarily for digging consisting of a long handle and blade, typically with the blade narrower and flatter than the common shovel. Early spades were made of riven wood or of animal bones (often shoulder blades). After the a ...

shovel A shovel is a tool used for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore. Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made of ...

etc. Indian Punjabi labours were digging this

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

and attached the cast iron rings with the tunnel wall. Sir Harley Hugh Dalrymple was the project head of this construction. He and the boiler specialist John Lochrance was designed Asia's first underwater tunnel in 1928. The construction was began in March 1930. At first labours digging a well on the

side at Indian Botanic Garden in Howrah. After one month, another similar well began digging on the opposite side of Hooghly River at Metiabruz in Kolkata. The wells digging process were taken to complete first four months. Then the main tunnel digging process was began from Metiabruz side, under from the river bottom. The Asia's first

was finally completed in July 1931. The total construction of this tunnel took 17 months to complete. Two Indian labours and Normal Smith a British worker died during the construction.

Importance

The CESC tunnel was specially studied by the engineers of

Kolkata Metro The Kolkata Metro is a rapid transit system serving the city of Kolkata in West Bengal, India. , it has two operational lines, a line from Dakshineswar to Kavi Subhash and a line from Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah, for a total of . Four o ...

, for the construction of

East West Metro Tunnel East West Metro Tunnel is a constructed underwater river tunnel of Kolkata Metro in Kolkata, West Bengal. The river tunnel is constructed underneath Hooghly River. After the CESC Tunnel in 1931, this is the second underwater river tunnel of Ho ...

. This tunnel is an important part of the electric supply system of the

CESC Limited The Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC) is the Kolkata-based flagship company of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, born from the erstwhile RPG Group, under the chairmanship of businessman Sanjiv Goenka. It is an Indian electricity gene ...

company.

References

{{Reflist Tunnels Tunnels completed in 1931 Hydroelectricity in Asia