A day after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath flagged off the commercial run of the Lucknow Metro Rail service, people riding the metro services on its first day on Wednesday were in for a surprise.
The metro temporarily stopped near Alambagh station due to technical glitches, reported news agency ANI. The 8.5-km priority corridor from Transport Nagar to Charbagh is supposed to be operational from 6 am to 10 pm daily.
On Tuesday, Rajnath, who represents Lucknow in Lok Sabha, said the metro rail has opened the doors to infrastructure development in the UP capital. “Lucknow will now be known as the city of metro rail,” he said, dedicating the project to former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “Atalji was an MP from Lucknow and as PM, he had launched the first metro rail project in the country in Delhi,” the Home Minister said.
Adityanath also announced that instead of setting up separate metro rail corporations to execute projects in different parts of the state, the state government has decided to set up a UP Metro Rail Corporation. The CM also invited ‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan, who is currently principal advisor to Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation, to work with the corporation as principal advisor.
The metro inauguration had also sparked a battle between the present and the former government to take credit for the project. Samajwadi Party has said that CM Adityanath inaugurated a project that has already been flagged off by former CM Akhilesh Yadav. Akhilesh too to Twitter and posted photographs of him with the officials of Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation.
“Lucknow Metro will make life easy and will recall the memories about Sreedharanji and the team that made the dream come true,” Akhilesh tweeted.
