Kolkata, July 18: Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee said Saturday the much-awaited Kolkata Metro extension project linking Tollygunge and Garia will be operational from next month.
“The Metro extension project between Tollygunge and Garia is near completion and would be hopefully inaugurated Aug 23. The journey between Tollygunge and Garia would cover a 4-km stretch and have six stations,” Banerjee said at a press conference at her south Kolkata residence.
She said all the six stations would be named after legends of West Bengal like renowned poet Nazrul Islam, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, freedom fighter Khudiram Bose and Masterda Surya Sen, with one named after Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize winning work “Gitanjali”.
“The Tollygunge Metro station would be named after (Bengali actor) Uttam Kumar,” she said, adding the new Metro service will be a puja gift for the people of Bengal.
Banerjee said the railway ministry would also run a daily ladies special train in the morning and another in the evening during peak hours from Sunday.
“We’re also trying to run many other trains in the next few months which we proposed in the recent railway budget. Hopefully, some of those proposed trains would start plying in next month,” she said.
—IANS