Bowbazar Sec: E-W Metro completes track laying

Kolkata: After five years of challenges, the issue in the Bowbazar section of the East-West Metro corridor (Green Line) has been resolved.

The Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation Limited (KMRCL) announced that the track-laying works in the west-bound tunnel, between the Esplanade and Sealdah stations have been completed.

KMRCL had set a target for the completion of this work by December 25, this year. On Tuesday, just one day ahead of schedule, the general manager of Metro Railway, P Uday Kumar Reddy, along with KMRCL chairman and Metro Railway principal chief engineer Anuj Mittal, conducted a trolley inspection of the completed tunnel section between Esplanade and Sealdah.

The 16.6-kilometre East-West corridor is currently operational in two phases, from Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah, and from Howrah Maidan to Esplanade. However, the 2-kilometre stretch between Esplanade and Sealdah remained unfinished due to water ingress and tunnel collapses in the Bowbazar area on multiple occasions—first on August 31, 2019, followed by two more incidents on May 22, 2022 and October 14 in the same year.

“A long battle of more than five years was finally won through the use of advanced retrofitting methods, geo-stabilisation techniques with geophysical investigation, and modern track fittings,” a Metro Railway official said.