Besides making commuting easy for students and the locals, inauguration of the new 11-km Mundka-Bahadurgarh section on Delhi Metro’s Green Line is expected to provide impetus to the over ₹6,000-crore booming footwear industry in the city.
With around 800 footwear manufacturing units in the city’s Footwear Park and Modern Industrial Area, Bahadurgarh boasts one of the largest footwear industries in the country. It now hopes for a surge in profits with better connectivity to Delhi.
Naresh Bansal, owner of Reshma Footwears Pvt. Ltd., hoped that metro connectivity will help increase profits by 25% to 30%, attracting more wholesale buyers.
Traffic jams
“Earlier, wholesale buyers would avoid coming to Bahadurgarh because of the hassle of travelling and traffic jams. They would do most of the buying in Delhi. Now with the arrival of the metro, we expect them to come to us,” said Mr. Bansal.
Former Bahadurgarh Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Sushil Goyal said better connectivity will also address the issue of labour scarcity for the industry during the peak Diwali and Holi seasons.
“It will also mean that travelling to Chandni Chowk, Chawri Bazar and Karol Bagh in Delhi for raw materials will be hassle free and less time-consuming for industry owners,” said Mr. Goyal.
Though one metro station on the new section is situated in the Modern Industrial Area, which houses several footwear units, Footwear Park is still 5 km away from the new metro line and will benefit more with the proposed expansion of the metro link to Sampla in Rohtak in the times to come.
Rajesh Sood, the director of PDM University which offers various courses like engineering, dental and architecture and planning, said a majority of the over 5,000 students enrolled in its various programmes belong to Delhi and will benefit immensely from the metro.
“We ply around 100 buses daily for our students in different parts of Delhi, but those staying in far-flung areas such as Mukherjee Nagar, Shahdara and Mayur Vihar stand to benefit the most,” he said, adding that the number of buses carrying students will now be reduced as most of them would prefer the metro.
Welcoming the new metro section, Komal Gupta (21), a student at a CA institute at Kohat, said she will now be able to travel late at night without worrying about her safety.
Late classes
“My classes run till 9 p.m. I used to stay back in a paying guest accommodation or at a relative’s place since it is not safe to travel alone by bus. Now I can concentrate on studies without having to worry about travelling. It is a big boon for hundreds of students like me, especially women, studying in Delhi,” she said.
The locals hope the new metro link will also reduce traffic on roads and make the Delhi-Bahadurgarh (Tikri) border congestion free.