After East-West high, hiccup for Joka line at Esplanade

Kolkata: Joka-Esplanade Metro’s underground section suffered a major setback as the Defence ministry has refused Metro Railway the permission to shift B C Roy Market and build the proposed Esplanade station at the spot, Metro Railway general manager P Uday Kumar Reddy said on Friday. The underground section passes through the Maidan.“The Esplanade station was supposed to come where the B C Roy market is located. The entire B C Roy market is an unauthorized market and the ministry of defence (MoD) has now refused us permission to make a station there,” Reddy said during a media briefing on the Metro Ride App’s availability on iPhones as well.“We have no information on this yet. May be, we will be told next week,” an official at Eastern Command headquarters in Kolkata told TOI.Referring to the Joka-Esplanade (Purple) line, the GM said that the MoD has made known the veto on the proposed Esplanade terminal station’s location “very recently”. TOI on June 26, 2023 reported that Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), implementing agency of the Purple line, had awarded the contract to build the 5-km underground Mominpore-Esplanade section to L&T.On May 31, 2023, TOI reported that bids had been floated for a new (Rs 54 crore) two-storey BC Roy market at Curzon Park, above the East-West Metro Esplanade station. Over the last three years, RVNL has been waiting for Army’s permission to shift the 500-odd shops. There were plans to start construction of the new B C Roy market once the permission came through. The contractor would have completed the structure in a year and the shop owners of the existing market could have shifted and the structure demolished to make way for the Purple line’s terminal station.This is the northern and final section of the 14km Line 3 (Joka to Esplanade) which started operations of its seventh station at Majerhat on March 15. L&T has already started pre-construction work for the proposed Victoria and Park Street stations. L&T is supposed to complete the work — which includes twin tunnels running through four underground stations at Kidderpore, Victoria, Park Street and Esplanade — in four years. The line will pass through the Army’s Maidan area near Fort William (an agreement on its alignment with the MoD took 10 years to materialize). Now there’s a setback for the terminal Esplanade station’s location.“We have to find a solution for the Esplanade station. We still want Esplanade to be the interchange point. Another interchange is at Park Street. We will take some time,” the Metro GM added.