The commuters who boarded the first Metro train to Sealdah, in West Bengal's capital Kolkata, were delighted to be welcomed by the staff with red roses. The photos of the happy occasion on Thursday were shared by Metro Rail Kolkata on its official Twitter handle and have since gone viral.
"Commuters of the first Metro from #Sealdah being welcomed with roses by Metro staff this morning," the tweet accompanying the photos read.
This gave the commuters several selfie moments, as seen in the viral photos. The Kolkata Metro staff members happily posed with the commuters who were delighted to receive the "gift".
The Metro station, part of the East-West corridor on Line 2 of Kolkata Metro, was inaugurated by Union Minister for Women and Child welfare, Smriti Irani on Monday. She said that the extension to Sealdah, a terminal railway station in the city, will help around 35,000 passengers in their daily commute from adjoining districts.
The inauguration of Metro rail services in the city's East-West route would only make life simpler for commuters, particularly those coming from Sealdah railway station. Commuters may now avoid the bus route and take use of the corridor's recently introduced Metro service.
The extended service of the East-West Metro up to Sealdah on its 9 km truncated route started commercially from today. The service is now available between Sector V and Phoolbagan in the city and will be extended by 2.33 km.
Out of the 16.6-kilometre-long of East-West Metro route, the underground corridor constitutes 10.8 km between Howrah and Phoolbagan with the tunnel passing below the Hooghly river, while the rest is elevated corridor, according to Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation, the executing agency of the project.
The Sealdah-Esplanade link faced bottleneck as several houses developed cracks during underground work at Bowbazar area in central Kolkata in May, nearly three years after a similar incident there. This has delayed the completion of the project from its slated date of December, 2021.
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