New Delhi:
The Uttar Pradesh on Monday will witness maiden run of the Lucknow Metro on the occasion of Teacher’s Day. It will be flagged off by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The Union Minister, who represents the Lucknow Lok Sabha seat, will flag off the first train, whereas the Chief Minister will do so from the Transport Nagar metro station.
However, it will be available for public services from September 6. The part 1 of the project, which is 8.5-km-long will cover Transport Nagar to Charbagh. It will be operational for the public from 6 am to 10 pm everyday.
Earlier, the trail run on the same stretch was flagged off by former CM Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Yadav in December 2016.
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However, the Union home minister’s presence at the event is a strong signal from the BJP that it was the Narendra Modi government at the Centre which contributed the bulk of the funds to the project.
The BJP continuously attacked the Akhilesh government during the assembly election campaign for not running metro trains in the city.
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.
The clearance finally came through recently, paving the way for commercial operations to begin.
The Centre had recently cleared a new Metro Rail Policy too, mandating private investment in such projects, in order to speed up future metro projects. BSP leader Mayawati had criticised the policy.
(With PTI inputs)
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