Sealdah, One Of The Busiest Railway Stations In The Country, Gets Its Own Metro | IN PICS

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani on Monday inaugurated the underground Sealdah Metro Railway station of East-West Metro corridor in Kolkata. (Source: IANS)

The extended service of the East-West Metro up to Sealdah on its 9 km truncated route will start commercially from Thursday. The service is now available between Sector V and Phoolbagan in Kolkata. (Source: Getty)

Smriti Irani said that the extension to Sealdah, a terminal rrailway station in the city, will help around 35,000 passengers in their daily commute from adjoining districts. (Source: IANS)

The construction of the 2.33 km Metro railway stretch between Phoolbagan and Sealdah was done at a cost of Rs 1,250 crore. It will take only 21 minutes to cover the distance from Sealdah to Sector V, which is generally a one hour travel time by road. (Source: Indian Railways)

The Sealdah station is a part of the East-West corridor, a part of which is built under the Hooghly River, which is first of its kind in India. Out of the 16.6 km-long East-West Metro route, the underground corridor constitutes 10.8 km between Howrah and Phoolbagan. (Source: Getty)

The metro construction faced bottleneck as several houses developed cracks during underground work at Bowbazar area in central Kolkata in May. This has delayed the completion of the project from its slated date of December, 2021. (Source: Indian Railways)

The inauguration was held amidst controversy over delayed invitation to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The event was not attended by the local Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandopadhyay or local MLA Paresh Pal. (Source: Indian Railways)

The foundation stone for the East-West Metro project, which will connect Howrah to Sealdah and Salt Lake when fully operational, was laid in February 2009 by the then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. (Source: Indian Railways)