The Joka-Esplanade Metro corridor received a major boost with the ministry of defence finally approving the relocation of BC Roy Market to make way for the terminal Esplanade station.
The Army is the custodian of the Maidan, through which around 3 km of the 5-km underground section of the 14-km Purple Line passes.
In March, the MoD refused to allow the relocation of the “unauthorised” market to Curzon Park — atop the East-West Metro’s Esplanade station. The land, where the East-West Metro’s Esplanade station has been built, also belongs to the Army. At that time, Metro Railway general manager P Uday Kumar Reddy had said while metro hoped for a solution to the stalemate, without the MoD’s nod, the corridor might have to be terminated at Park Street, instead of Esplanade, as planned.
The Purple Line’s 300 m×25 m Esplanade station is planned at the location, where BC Roy Market, popularly known as Maidan Market, now stands. The Joka-Esplanade corridor currently runs 8 km from Joka to Majerhat.
In May, Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), the implementing agency of the Purple Line, came up with a win-win solution: Instead of razing the market at one go to make way for the Esplanade Metro station, the agency decided to build it in phases. Five-hundred-and twenty-eight traders would first be shifted within land, already allocated by the Army for the station. While the Metro station’s basic structure is being built on the 100m land earmarked on the Kolkata Mounted Police paddock, traders will be relocated here. Then, the existing market will be razed. The Mounted Police paddock has already been shifted to the Shahid Minar grounds. Eventually, BC Roy Market will be rebuilt atop the new Esplanade station.
This plan was tabled in a stakeholders’ meeting, comprising PWD, which owns BC Roy Market, Kolkata Police, the local military authority or LMA (represented by Eastern Command officials) and KMC. The LMA immediately forwarded the proposal to the MoD in Delhi. The final nod or “working permission for construction of a temporary structure for temporary shifting of BC Roy Market at Esplanade” came only recently.
