Kavi Subhash stn to be razed, truncated N-S Metro services for at least a year
Times of India | 30 July 2025
Kolkata: Commuters may have to wait an entire year to use Kavi Subhash metro station, the terminal station of the North-South Blue Line, which is also the city's lifeline. Metro Railway has decided to demolish the station and rebuild it after cracks appeared on its columns, which were found to be beyond repair.
"We have already started the razing work. Workers have been assigned to dismantle parts of the station – the signal and telecom (ST) equipment and so on," a senior official of Metro Railway said on Tuesday, a day after the station was shut down and metro services terminated at Sahid Khudiram.
When asked to comment, Metro Railway general manager P Uday Kumar Reddy said: "The station's piers or columns on which the platform stands have weakened beyond repair. If the pillars are to be dismantled, how can the station remain? The entire Kavi Subhash station will have to be rebuilt.
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The general manager added that Metro Railway has been planning to rectify the constructional defects of Kavi Subhash station for some time now. "We have invited tenders from contractors who can do the restoration work. We would have started after Durga Puja. But now, we are suddenly faced with an emergency situation with the heavy downpour that seemed to have led to some ground subsidence. Therefore, the work has to be taken up without further delay.
"The Officials confirmed that this was the first time in the history of Kolkata Metro that a station was being dismantled and rebuilt. "All the other 25 stations of the 40-year-old North-South line, extended in various phases to Kavi Subhash in the south and Dakshineswar on the northern fringes, are in good shape," an official said.
The 32km Blue Line's southern extension happened in two phases in 2009-10, first between the then terminal Tollygunge or Uttam Kumar metro station to Garia Bazar (Kavi Nazrul) and then to New Garia (Kavi Subhash). The final section in the southern end was opened in Oct 2010.
"Over the last four decades, the corridor has remained the city's transportation lifeline, ferrying around 6 lakh passengers every day, but no other station's design has been as flawed as the terminal Kavi Subhash station. The station's overhaul has been long overdue because the authorities have been aware of the structural issues," said Subhasis Sengupta, vice-president, the INTTUC-affiliated Metro Railway Progotisil Shramik Karmachari Union.
Metro officials said the process of inviting bids for rebuilding Kavi Subhash station is underway. "We were a bit unprepared for what happened yesterday. Different kinds of planning are going on. Our utmost priority is passenger safety and security. We shall also try our best to get the work completed as quickly as possible, so that operations can be resumed at Kavi Subhash station," the Metro GM said.
He said the station would be opened to the public as soon as the rebuilt station was in a position to run trains safely. The superficial and architectural works can continue even after the station has started functioning, an official said.