Kolkata, Mar 25, 2025, IANS

Kolkata, March 25 (IANS) A recent internal survey by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), on Tuesday, found that nearly 44 per cent of the total number of wards in areas under the corporation's jurisdiction, which included Kolkata and added areas, are dengue-prone, officials said. The total number of the wards under KMC stands at 144. As per the internal survey, 68 wards of them are dengue-prone, an insider from the corporation claimed. "The corporation mapped all the 144 wards under its jurisdiction to identify the dengue-prone pockets based on past figures on this count. The benchmark in the matter is that if 10 or more persons in a particular ward have been tested positive for dengue last year, that particular ward is identified as the hotspot," a KMC official said. As per records, the number of people tested positive for dengue in the KMC area witnessed an impressive decline in 2024 to just 1,316 from the figure of 13,926 in 2023. As per official records, in the first three months of the current calendar year of 2024, a total of 45 persons in Kolkata have tested positive for dengue. "This improvement was achieved because last year the KMC took special drives to prevent stagnation of water, spraying of chemicals through fogging machines and penalising the house-owners careless of preventing water stagnation. So for the current year, the corporation wants to be especially careful of the preventive measures and this is why area-wise mapping has been done," the KMC official added. He added that this time the corporation will be stricter towards preventing negligence by common people in the matter. First, the defaulting house owners or the housing society authorities would be served notices by the corporation, he said. The second stage will be registering FIRs against the defaulters and for that, the corporation will seek the assistance of the city police, the KMC official added. Last year, the opposition BJP, especially Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, had been constantly accusing the Trinamool Congress government of under-reporting the actual figure on dengue-affected people in the state, including that in Kolkata.