The defence ministry’s refusal to grant permission to Metro Railway to shift a market to build the proposed Esplanade station is the latest in a series of setbacks the Joka-Esplanade corridor has suffered.
The Esplanade station would have been the terminal station of the 16km corridor, which is now functional on an 8km elevated stretch between Joka and Majerhat. The 6km underground section is from Mominpore to Esplanade.
The Esplanade station is scheduled to come up where BC Roy Market now stands. The Metro authorities had planned to shift the traders to an upcoming complex above the Esplanade station of the East-West Metro (Green Line).
“The defence ministry has refused to grant us permission to build a station. The army is the custodian of the entire area. They are refusing permission since BC Roy Market is unauthorised,” Metro general manager P. Uday Kumar Reddy said on Friday.
The project was conceived in 2010. Work on the 16km corridor had started in July 2011 but the project soon ran into land logjams.
It was stalled since 2011 because of a stand-off between the railways and defence ministry and construction could take place only between Joka and Majerhat.
Initially, the plan was to build a viaduct but the army, which is the custodian of the Maidan, objected to the plan. The defence ministry had agreed to allow tracks of the Joka-Esplanade Metro to go through the Maidan in 2015 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention.
However, there were issues such as additional cost and the army had objected to construction of entry and exit points for the underground Victoria Memorial and Park Street stations.
The breakthrough came in July 2019, after multiple meetings initiated by the state government. The railway ministry then allocated Rs 2,825 crore for the underground section.
Construction at Majerhat was also stalled for six months in the wake of the collapse of the Majerhat bridge in September 2018.
A PIL was filed in Calcutta High Court, seeking a ban on construction near the Victoria Memorial. It was only in February 2022 that the army informed the high court that it had no objection to construction under the Maidan.
A parcel of the Maidan has been barricaded for construction of the Victoria station. Some clubs around Park Street have been vacated for the construction.
The latest setback comes just when construction had gained momentum.
Esplanade is being built as a multi-modal transport hub connected to three Metro links — North-South (Blue Line), East-West (Green Line) and Joka-Esplanade (Purple Line).
On Friday, Metro officials said if the permission for Esplanade station of the Purple Line does not come, then the Metro link from Joka would have to terminate at Park Street.
But a senior official told Metro on Saturday: “The Purple Line has to reach Esplanade. There is no other way. The state government also wants the multi-modal transport hub at Esplanade. Rites has already done a detailed study in this regard. At Park Street, only two corridors (Blue and Purple lines) can be linked.”
A section of Metro officials blamed the Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, the executing agency of the Purple Line.
“The RVNL rushed to award the tender for the construction of the underground section. The tender should have been awarded after all these things were taken care of,” said an official.
The main problem in shifting BC Roy Market is allegedly unauthorised traders. “We can rehabilitate only authorised shopkeepers. But more than half of the stall owners in the market are unauthorised,” the official said.
Rajesh Shaw, general secretary of the traders’ association in the market, said: “There are around 500 shop owners here. They have valid papers. We do not have any direct link with the Metro Railway or the army. We are under the PWD (of the state government).”
A PWD official said the market was set up after a lease between the Centre and the state government in the 1950s. “The lease period was a little over 20 years. So, it ended some time in the 1970s and was never renewed. So, the army has dubbed the entire market illegal,” the official said.
A railway official doubted if all the drawings and detailed reports were shared with the army. “The RVNL has messed things up. We have to go back to the drawing board and look at ways to resolve this,” he said.
Amit Ray, executive director of RVNL, did not answer calls.
“There has been a problem. But we are hopeful of being able to sort it out,” said Metro general manager Reddy.