A nod from the defence ministry to shift a market in the heart of the city has come as a shot in the arm for the Joka-Esplanade Metro project (Purple Line).

The project, already plagued by several delays, is still far from completion and many challenges remain.

The defence ministry has recently approved the relocation of BC Roy Market to make way for the Esplanade station of the Joka-Esplanade line, army sources said.

Esplanade will be the terminal station of the 15km 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, popularly known as the Maidan Market, now stands.

The Metro authorities had planned to shift the traders to a complex being built above the Esplanade station of East-West Metro (Green Line) at Curzon Park.

But the defence ministry had earlier refused to grant permission for the relocation. 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 had said in March.

Senior railway officials then talked about the possibility of terminating the corridor at Park Street, instead of Esplanade.

In May, Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), the implementing agency of the project, came up with a proposal to go about the job in phases, instead of razing the market at one go.

According to the plan, 528 traders would first be shifted to a plot already allocated by the army for the station. The plot, north of Manohar Das Tarag on the Maidan, used to be the paddock of the Kolkata Mounted Police, the country’s oldest mounted police division.

It has since shifted to a plot south of Shaheed Minar. Water has been drained out of the tank.

The traders will initially be relocated to the plot north of the waterbody. Then, the existing BC Roy Market will be razed. Eventually, the market will be rebuilt atop the new Esplanade station.

“This plan was tabled in a stakeholders’ meeting, attended by representatives of the PWD, which owns BC Roy Market, Kolkata Police, the local military authority (represented by Eastern Command officers) and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. The local military authority immediately forwarded the proposal to the defence ministry in Delhi. The final nod or working permission for the construction of a temporary structure for temporary shifting of BC Roy Market at Esplanade came only recently,” an army source said.

Metro officials were tight-lipped on the development. “It is a breakthrough. But a lot of work remains,” said a senior official who requested anonymity.

The four underground stations of the corridor are Kidderpore, Victoria, Park Street and Esplanade. Slices of the Maidan have already been cordoned off for construction of the last three stations.

The construction of the diaphragm wall of a shaft to launch the tunnel-boring machines to build the
underground section of the corridor started in Kidderpore in June.

The shaft is being built at St Thomas’ Boys’ School. The construction of the D-Wall of the launching shaft started in late June.

“The tunnel-boring machines are expected to arrive from Germany in January 2025 and will start working from March,” said a Metro source.

“There are issues that have to be sorted out with the state government before construction gets going in the Bodyguard Lines in Alipore,” said the source.

The project has also had its share of legal setbacks. In an October 23 order, the Supreme Court said trees in the Maidan area cannot be felled for the Metro project without the permission of a central empowered committee (CEC) under the Union ministry of environment, forests and climate change.

The court was hearing a PIL by an NGO. The plea challenged a June 20 Calcutta High Court verdict that dismissed a petition seeking an order to stop Metro construction in the Maidan because of alleged felling of trees.