It’s official: E-W to start full 16.6km Sec V-Hwh Maidan run in Mar 2025
Times of India | 8 August 2024
Kolkata: East-West Metro is likely to start its full 16.6km run in March next year, Anuj Mittal, the new Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) — the implementing agency of the India’s first under-river metro — managing director, said on Wednesday.
“We are targeting a March 2025 commissioning. It’s indeed a privilege to be a part of the accomplished team that will ensure that the entire 16.6km corridor, which includes India’s first under-river rail tracks in the 4.8km Esplanade to Howrah Maidan section, is launched,” Mittal, who did his BTech from IIT Roorkee and MTech from IIT Delhi said.
Speaking to TOI, Mittal, who is also the principal chief engineer of Metro Railway, said, “I am proud to be the baton-holder as the project veers toward its final phase.”
The 1990-batch IRSE official, who has worked in Eastern, South-Eastern and Metro Railway, besides RVNL, said he would inspect the under-construction Esplanade-Sealdah stretch on Thursday, to have an inkling of the work progress.“The last cross passage (CP) has been completed. We have had to do away with three other CPs and replace it with a passenger evacuation shaft at Bowbazar. Let me see for myself the status of the construction in this challenging stretch and then comment on the details,” said Mittal. East-West Metro or the Green Line now operates in two disjointed sections – a 9.4km Sector V-Sealdah in the east and another Esplanade-Howrah Maidan stretch in the west. The 2.5km Sealdah-Esplanade section is incomplete.
TOI on April11 reported that “work progress was ‘very slow’ and E-W’s full run may be possible next Feb,” even as the authorities had announced that the entire corridor would start operating in Oct this year.
“Safety comes first, at whatever cost,” Mittal said, indicating that much as efforts were on to complete the project earlier that the new deadline, the completion of the Esplanade-Sealdah section — which includes the subsidence-ridden Bowbazar area — would depend much on the behaviour of the porous soil.