Uttar Pradesh Metro Corporation will be constituted for starting metro services in various cities of the state, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said here today.

The CM made the announcement while jointly inaugurating with Home Minister Rajnath Singh the maiden run of the Lucknow Metro in the presence of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Govenor Ram Naik and other dignitaries.

Adityanath also requested metroman E Sridharan to be the principal advisor to the proposed umbrella body which would explore launching metro services in Varanasi, Kanpur, Agra, Moradabad, Allahabad, Meerut, Gorakhpur, Jhansi and other cities. “In place of separate metro corporations, we will constitute UP Metro Corporation to run metro services in the state,” he said.

The corporation will also explore possibilities of mono rail services in some parts of the state.

The home minister, who is a Lok Sabha member from Lucknow, said in 2014 he came to know that Public Investment Board gave green signal to the metro services in his constituency. “The smartness of Lucknow has increased after launch of metro services here and it has become a smart city,” he said.

He said to ease traffic congestion in the state capital, the work on 104 km ring road has started and it would be completed in next two years. He also remembered former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for getting Shaheed Path constructed in the city. “I devote this metro service to Vajpayeeji,” he said. Vajpayee represented Lucknow in the Lok Sabha in the past.

Elaborating initiatives to ease traffic congestion in the city, Rajnath said, “Four new flyovers will be constructed while a new entry will be opened at Charbagh railway station, where more tracks will be laid and two new platforms will also come up.”

The public services of Lucknow metro will start from tomorrow.

The 8.5-km-long ‘Priority Corridor’ from Transport Nagar to Charbagh, which is part of the Phase 1 of the project, will be operational for the public from 6 am to 10 pm everyday.

Former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav had flagged off the trial run on the same stretch in December last year, just ahead of the assembly elections, to showcase it as a signature project of the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government.

The BJP had attacked the Akhilesh government during the assembly election campaign, asking why metro trains were not running in Lucknow. As the matter got embroiled in politics, Akhilesh had shot back saying it was due to the delay in obtaining clearance from the commissioner, Metro Railway Safety, and had blamed the Centre for it.

Akhilesh yesterday posted a series of tweets to claim credit for the metro services. “We had run engine, bogies had to follow,” he tweeted yesterday with pictures of metro inauguration. “Before sitting in metro started by Samajwadis, the government should take care of 5000 stray cattles on roads, he had said in another tweet.

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