Kolkata's Mominpore station jinx broken, Joka-BBD Bag Metro rises again

KOLKATA: The Joka-BBD Bag Metro, which was mired in uncertainty after a stalemate over the location of Mominpore station, is back on tracks. And this time, it is the state government that showed the way by helping out with land.
The Mominpore station — which could be one of the busiest on this line — will now be based at the Alipore Bodyguard Lines, which also houses the city armed police headquarters.In the earlier alignment, Rail Vikash Nigam Limited (RVNL), the executing agency of the project, needed 2,500 sq m land in the Command Hospital.
The Army refused, forcing RVNL to stall the entire project until a solution was found. Mominpore was one of the pivots of the project and the project planners couldn’t afford to bypass it, said an official.
The railways pointed out that if they skip Mominpore, the gap between Majherhaat and Kidderpore stations will exceed 2.7km.
This is far more than the standard gap of 1-1.5km between stations and will defeat the purpose of the project for a large section of the local population. "Mominpore alone had the projection of 20,000 peak hour passengers. And that’s one way. There was no justification of going ahead without Mominpore Metro Station," a senior RVNL officer told TOI.
But with the Army refusing to budge, the project that has been on in fits and starts since 2011 was back in the doldrums. The state government, which was feeling edgy ever since Metro Railways suspended work, stepped in to save the day. It conducted a detailed survey of the alignment, to find out alternative sites and proposed to build the station at Alipore Bodyguard Lines. Alapan Bandyopadhyay, principal secretary of the transport department, and chief nodal officer Narayan Swarup Nigam carried out the survey all along the alignment along with their officers. "Since Mominpore station will require a small piece of land, it won’t be an issue here," said a transport department officer.
RVNL is happy with the proposal and is ready to make the necessary changes, say sources."Mominpore station had become a serious issue and one of the biggest hurdles of the project. Skipping the station wasn’t an option. A lot of passengers would have been deprived of a faster mode transport. If the Army had given us the land, Army personnel would have been the biggest beneficiaries along with residents of Mominpore. Now, if we get the land from police, it’s police who will benefit," said a Metro Railway official.
RVNL and Metro officials lauded the efforts of the state government, particularly the transport department, which came forward to "rescue the project from a series of land-tangles".
"The state government has set a precedence," said a railway official.
The ministry of defence (MoD) has cleared another hurdle, though. It has granted permission to the railways to use the ground below Turf View and Racecourse to dig the tunnel. Turf View houses the defence officers’ residential quarters. The twin Metro tunnels will pass 15-18m below the surface, say sources. This underground stretch will be 1,450m-long and the tunnels will be five metres wide each.
The only other hurdle that remains is the MoD clearance for using a sizeable chunk of land in the Maidan where the tunnel boring machine will be lowered. The alignment has already got clearances from the ministry of finance to pass through Alipore Mint land.