West Bengal: East-West Metro’s Phoolbagan extension gets CRS nod

KOLKATA: East-West Metro’s Phoolbagan extension received the mandatory safety nod from the Commissioner of Safety (CRS) on Wednesday. The section can now be launched when the lockdown ends and commuters will be able to go from Sector V to Phoolbagan in 16 minutes flat, for only Rs 20.
This will bring a meaningful number of riders to Kolkata’s Line 2 because it takes more than an hour to travel the stretch by bus and auto. The truncated 5km from Sector V to Salt Lake stadium was inaugurated in February, but it couldn’t attract a significant number of passengers. Adding Phoolbagan also means that Kolkata will get its first underground Metro station in 25 years.
Manas Sarkar, MD, Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), the agency implementing the he agency implementing the 16km Sector V-Howrah Maidan East-West Metro, said, “The date of the inauguration has not been decided yet. The CRS has made some observations, which must be complied with before the section can be thrown open to the public. But this is certainly a big day for the East-West Metro project.”
CRS, NF-eastern circle, Abhai Kumar Rai had inspected the stretch on Friday. Wearing a mask, Rai had walked the 1.6km of tracks between the elevated Salt Lake Stadium station and the underground Phoolbagan station.
The section under the CRS’ scanner was actually the 3km, mostly underground, stretch of the 16km East-West Metro, between Salt Lake Stadium station and Sealdah crossover via the underground Phoolbagan station.