NEW DELHI, Mar 6: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday inaugurated India’s first underwater metro train in Kolkata and also joined the inaugural ride with selected school students.
In a video shared by the BJP on its official X account, PM Modi was seen interacting with students during the metro ride from Esplanade to Howrah Maidan. He also spoke to the workers involved in the construction of the project, an engineering marvel.
He was accompanied by West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose and BJP leaders Suvendu Adhikari and Sukanta Majumdar.
The Howrah Maidan-Esplanade section also has the deepest metro station in the country — the Howrah Metro Station. It is nestled under the Hooghly River, which separates the twin cities of Kolkata and Howrah.
Kolkata Metro touched a milestone in April last year as its rakes completed a trial journey under the bed of Hooghly through a tunnel 32 metre below the water level for the first time in India. Spanning a 4.8-km stretch between Howrah Maidan and Esplanade, it forms a vital segment of the East-West Metro corridor, connecting key areas such as the IT hub Salt Lake Sector V.
The 4.8-km stretch of East-West Metro from Howrah Maidan to Esplanade has been built at a cost of ₹ 4,965 crore. Of the total 16.6 km of the East-West Metro corridor, 10.8 km is underground, including the tunnel beneath the river. A Metro train is expected to traverse the 520-metre stretch under the river in just 45 seconds.
According to officials, the work for the East-West corridor began in 2009 and tunnelling under Hooghly commenced in 2017. The Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah stretch of the corridor is commercially operational at present.
During the function at the Esplanade metro station, Mr Modi also inaugurated the Kavi Subhash-Hemanta Mukhopadhyay section of the New Garia-Airport line and the Taratala-Majerhat section of the Joka-Esplanade line of the Kolkata Metro, the country’s oldest metro network.
PM Modi also virtually inaugurated the Duhai-Modinagar (North) section of the Delhi-Meerut RRTS Corridor, Pune Metro’s Ruby Hall Clinic-Ramwadi stretch, Kochi Metro’s SN Junction to Tripunithura section, and Agra Metro’s Taj East Gate-Mankameshwar section. He also laid the foundation stone for the extension of the Pune Metro between Pimpri Chinchwad and Nigdi.
After Mr Modi inaugurated the priority corridor of Agra Metro, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other leaders took the inaugural train ride from the Taj Mahal station to Taj Mahal East station in Agra. Metro services on the 6-km corridor will be available to commuters from Thursday onwards, with stops at Taj Mahal East station , Captain Shubham Gupta station, Fatehabad Road station, Taj Mahal station and Mankameshwar Temple station.
Mr Modi had laid the foundation stone of the metro on December 7, 2020 and it was completed in 23 months, the chief minister said even as he lauded the UPMRC for “maintaining the quality” of the project. “I express my gratitude to PM Narendra Modi for the Agra Metro and congratulate the people of city for it,” Yogi Adityanath said.
(Manas Dasgupta)