Rajnath, UP chief minister inaugurate Lucknow Metro

LUCKNOW: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath inaugurated the first service of Lucknow Metro on Tuesday at the Transport Nagar railway station.

Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, senior Ministers of the state cabinet, local legislators and Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development Hardeep Puri were present on the occasion along with Principal Adviser to the project E Sreedharan.

The 8.5-km stretch of the rapid transport Lucknow Metro system — from Transport Nagar to Charbagh railway station — will be open for public from Wednesday.

Adityanath, in his address on the occasion, lauded the team behind the project for its early completion and said the metro would ease traffic congestion in the state capital.

He assured that the work on other phases of the Lucknow Metro project would be completed at the earliest. Adityanath also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for facilitating a loan from the European Investment Bank for the project.

He said the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for similar projects in many other cities have been submitted to the Union government, adding that metro rail services will be soon available to the residents of Kanpur, Varanasi and Jhansi besides other places.

The Chief Minister did not miss the chance to take a dig at his predecessor Akhilesh Yadav, who started the project and has been taunting the Bhartiya Janata Party government for the last few days over the inauguration.

He said earlier some people rushed through the projects’ inauguration but on Tuesday as he spoke, the event looked “bhara-bhara” (complete and full) as there was maximum participation.

On Monday, some workers of the Samajwadi Party (SP) had organised a mock inauguration of the Lucknow Metro and distributed sweets, crediting Akhilesh Yadav for the “gift to Lucknow”. Yadav was invited but he chose not to turn up at the event and instead took to Twitter to express his views on the project which he conceived but was delivered by the BJP government.