The ITO-Kashmere Gate ‘Heritage Line’ of the Delhi Metro will be thrown open to the public on Sunday with the railway safety commissioner clearing the decks for its long-awaited commercial launch, the DMRC said on Friday.
Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will jointly inaugurate the line at 10 a.m. and it will be open for public use from noon onwards, DMRC chief spokesman Anuj Dayal said.
The Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS) gave the green signal for the formal launch of the 5.17-km-long corridor on Thursday following a two-day inspection early this week.
Trip through time
With its launch, the Delhi Metro will make a major foray into old Delhi or the ‘Walled City’, with four stations: Delhi Gate, Jama Masjid, Lal Quila and Kashmere Gate.
The stations, all underground, have been designed in accordance with the heritage of the area to provide glimpses of its rich past and vibrant present.
The DMRC had tied up with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage to work on panels depicting images from Mughal-era Delhi, or Shahjahanabad, in each station.
More connections
The new line, which is essentially an extension of the Violet Line that runs between Faridabad and ITO presently, will take a considerable load off Rajiv Chowk, Chandni Chowk and Chawri Bazar stations of Yellow Line.
The Kashmere Gate station will also become the first station of the Delhi Metro network to have three interchanges: Red, Yellow and Violet Line.
Once the section is launched, residents of the densely-populated area will have direct access to commercial centres such as Connaught Place, Janpath, offices in Central Secretariat, and the satellite town of Faridabad.
The DMRC had approached the CMRS, the nodal body that deals with matters pertaining to the safety of rail travel and train operations in India, for the inspection of the line in March.
Trial runs of trains had begun last August.
DMRC chief Mangu Singh had said the line was well on course for launch last December but a labour crunch triggered by a ban on construction and demolition activities and demonetisation led to the delay.
As the line passes near several historical monuments, it took a lot of effort by the DMRC to convince the National Monuments Authority to approve the project, which it finally did in February 2013.
Once the line starts operation, the Delhi Metro network will be 218-km-long and the number of stations will go up to 164 from the present 160.
