Government retracts demand for smaller Metro station

KOLKATA: In a climbdown from its earlier demand that RVNL reduce its Metro construction space to make way for a wider Majerhat bridge, the state government on Thursday agreed to draw up a bridge design that would not infringe upon the Joka-Majerhat alignment.

The revised draft design, which will be finalized in a few days, will shift the central line of the bridge eastward so that a 22m-wide structure (5m wider than the collapsed bridge) can be accommodated within the available space, keeping a minimum of 1m or 1.5m clearance from the Metro alignment. The decisions were taken at a meeting convened by chief secretary Moloy De with top railway and state government officials at Nabanna on Thursday morning.


Over the last few weeks, the state public works department (PWD) was haggling for space with Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), the railways agency implementing the 9km Metro corridor between Joka and Majerhat.

Metro construction was suspended for 55 days after the rail overbridge (ROB) at Majerhat collapsed on September

4. But since the work resumed, PWD had been asking RVNL to shift the Metro’s alignment and reduce the area of the under-construction Majerhat Metro station to accommodate a 29m wide bridge.

The general arrangement drawings (GAD) kept changing over the last few days. Finally, PWD on Thursday assured RVNL that the revised design would be drawn up without encroachment on the Metro alignment. Even its working space would be protected, PWD engineers told RVNL officials.

The GAD or draft designs are prepared at each stage of development of a structure’s design, showing the overall relationship among the main elements and key dimensions. Whenever an ROB or rail underbridge is built by agencies other than the railways, GADs must be shared with the railways’ division concerned for approval. In the case of the Majerhat ROB, preliminary approval has been sought from RVNL, after which the railways will give its nod. The approval of the Majerhat GAD must be expedited due to the time constraint.

Earlier, some time was wasted when PWD engineers discarded the initial bowstring bridge idea and opted for a cable-stayed one, considering the space constraint at the construction site.

But they decided to shift the central line of the bridge after realizing that the Metro alignment was sacrosanct, following several communiqués and at least four meetings with RVNL officials.