'Dream of Kolkata': Piyush Goyal on 'world-class' Noapara-Dakshineswar metro
The minister said that the train with world-class facilities will benefit around 50,000 commuters every day.
Railways minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday said the Noapara and Dakshineswar metro rail fulfils the dream of Kolkata residents. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the extension of Kolkata Metro's North-South Line on February 22.
Announcing that the metro train between the two stations has become operational, the minister said that the train with world-class facilities will benefit around 50,000 commuters every day.
"Dream of Kolkata Residents Stands Fulfilled: Metro train between Noapara and Dakshineswar in West Bengal is now operational. With world-class facilities for fast and economically efficient commute, about 50,000 commuters will be benefited every day," Goyal said in a tweet with an over four-minute video.
The promotional video made by the Metro Rail blog Originals begins with the sound of temple bells of the Dakshineswar temple and a voice-over in Bengali. The video then offers visuals of the great architecture of the Dakshineswar metro station designed to in tune with the Dakshineswar Kali temple and said to be one of the most beautiful metro stations in the country.
The video states how metro stations used to be boring earlier with cheap infrastructure and ugly trains and then offers shots of the newly built metro station. As the video says, the medieval era architecture of the Dakshineswar metro station takes us to the times of Rani Rashmoni.
As per the video, the 4.41km stretch between Dakshineswar and Noapara was sanctioned 11 years ago but more than 500 encroachments took over seven years for the work to progress. It was after 2016 that the work got accelerated and the dreams of lakhs to see a metro train in Dakshineswar got fulfilled.
The north-south metro that went beyond Noapara to connect with Dakshineswar took two months of trial runs. The distance between Noapara and Dakshineswar that takes two hours by road can now be travelled in just 62 minutes, as claimed by the video.
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The metro train was described as one of the cheapest in the country with the distance of more than 31km between Dakshineswar and Noapara to be covered in just ₹25.
The video also showed the world-class facilities at the metro stations like smart cards, escalators, aesthetical infrastructure and seamless interchange facilities for the passengers to switch between the metro train and suburban railways.
This development comes ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections 2021 that is scheduled to be held in eight phases, with the first phase of polling to begin on March 27 and the last phase of polling on April 29. The votes will be counted on May 2.
