Orange Line to operate up to Sector V by Dec 31: Metro general manager
Times of India | 12 August 2026
Kolkata: The Orange Line would start operating up to Sector V by Dec, Metro Railway general manager Prem Sagar Gupta said on Tuesday.
“We are targeting to start Orange Line operations up to the IT Centre (Sector V) station by Dec 31, 2026,” the GM told TOI after the Purple Line TBM Divya’s breakthrough at Victoria station. Once that happens, the commute time between New Garia and Sector V will reduce considerably from one-and-a-half hours to around 35 minutes, even in peak hours.
The Dec date for extending Orange Line to the IT Centre Station means a lot to Kolkata commuters as it will enable direct transit between south Kolkata and the city’s IT hub. The GM on Tuesday said the expansion was now possible as the work to bridge the 366-m gap at the Chingrighata crossing was almost complete, having started in May, after the new govt took over.
The Orange Line—the full run will be between New Garia and airport—is currently operational between Kavi Subhash station in New Garia and Beleghata at Metropolitan on EM Bypass through nine stations. The new stations ready for openings are Gour Kishor Ghosh, Nalban and IT Centre.
Since May, once the work started at Chingrighata and on Salt Lake Bypass, Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), implementing agency of the 32km New Garia-airport corridor, has managed to bridge 335 m of the 366-m gap. Work to fix the last 31m span (concrete deck) began on Sunday night. “This is the last segment erection between the Orange Line’s Beleghata and IT Centre stations,” an official said. The entire bridging of the last span should be over in a fortnight, he said.
The work at Chingrighata had been pending since Feb 2025 as Kolkata Police did not grant a no-objection certificate (NOC) to block one flank at the busy crossing. The permission for traffic blocks was required for the Metro work that took six days across two phases to complete. Now that the work is nearing completion, RVNL has started laying tracks on the new viaduct. The other work includes putting up prefabricated parapet structures and iron railings on this stretch and installing bearings for railway tracks, to be laid on a 700m stretch.