The Hindu Business Line : Metro Rail services `fully operational'

One too many bandhs is never liked by anybody, and certainly not the urban office-goer. This is apparent from the reasonably good passenger turnout at Metro Rail stations since morning today, even as the Opposition called a 24-hour bandh, till late afternoon witnessed some stray incidents in certain pockets of south Kolkata.

Metro Rail services, barring a few disruptions in the morning caused by bandh supporters at select stations in the central business district, were said to be fully operational. According to a Metro Rail spokesperson, trains up to 3.00 p.m. were running at 15-minute intervals and carrying some 1.01 lakh passengers against a daily average (up to 3 p.m.) of 4 lakh passengers. He put the earnings at around Rs 4.30 lakh till 3.00 p.m. The average daily earnings of Metro Rail are said to be around Rs 16 lakh. We expect the earnings to stay around the normal Saturday levels, he pointed out.

Eastern, SE Railway

Meanwhile, both Eastern Railway and South Eastern Railway, after suffering major disruptions in services since morning by bandh supporters at various points, reported return of "normalcy to a great extent" in train operations, especially in sub-urban services, after 2.00 p.m.

Pointing out near normalcy in the Sealdah Division, ER officials said suburban trains were running in all sections except for some disruption in Ranaghat-Gede and three sections in Sealdah South (Canning, Diamond Harbour and Lakhshmikantapur).

Howrah line affected

In the Howrah Division, however, services remained affected in Chord line and Katwa sections. While three long distance trains arrived, four long distance trains - Shatabdi Express, Ganadevata Express, Black Diamon and Poorva Express - left for their respective destinations.

According to SER officials, the Howrah-Kharagpur services were hit in the morning owing to agitations by bandh supporters at different stations such as Keshabpur, Nalpur, Chengail, Bagnan, Bauria, Madpur, Dasnagar, Tikiapara and Kharagpur. While eight down Mail/Express trains arrived at Howrah, and some three long distance trains left the terminal, as many as seven mail/express trains, 8 EMU Locals and one passenger train suffered detention at different stations en route, according to SER.

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Metro Rail services `fully operational'