The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is renovating Harishchandra ghat burial ground in the city’s Rajajinagar area reportedly at a cost of Rs 50 lakh.
The civic body is upgrading the two electric furnaces at the ground.
BBMP’s electrical executive engineer for burial grounds V Anand said: “The existing furnaces are horizontal and now, we are making them vertical.”
Anand said doing maintenance work with the horizontal furnace takes a lot of time since the bricks have to be removed periodically. “The vertical furnace reduces the maintenance time,” Anand said.
“The furnaces are now completely dismantled. With the horizontal ones, it takes up to three days to cool and heat up. With the vertical furnace, we can finish the same work within a few hours since we don’t have to replace the coil. Until now, we had to wait for the coil to cool down. Now, (the renovation) saves the time,” he added.
The BBMP is also replacing the chimney with an electric one. A minimum of six bodies are cremated in the furnace, which could go up to ten sometimes necessitating the renovation of the chimney, the executive engineer said.
The civic body has made arrangements at Chamarajpet and Somanahalli burial grounds to accommodate bodies for cremations until the Harishchandra ghat is ready.
The cost of renovating the burial ground is said to be Rs 50 lakh. “We have been given February 18th as the deadline and we are trying to finish the renovation work before that,” said Anand.
“Usually it takes an hour to cremate each body, which costs Rs 250,” added Anand.