Smoke In Kolkata Metro Coach, Passengers Evacuated

Passengers of a Noapara-bound train in the North-South line of the Kolkata Metro were evacuated at Chandni Chowk station after smoke was seen billowing out from one of the coaches on Saturday, officials said.

Passengers raised an alarm after seeing smoke coming out from the air-conditioned metro rake when it stopped at the station in the central part of the city around 1.35 pm, Metro officials said.

The passengers were deboarded and the empty rake sent to Noapara carshed, the officials said. Nobody was injured in the incident and the services were briefly disrupted, they added.

Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday took umbrage at not being invited to the inauguration of the East-West Metro corridor, saying that her team had to “shed tears” to get the project sanctioned when she was the railway minister.

The first phase of the East-West corridor of the mass rapid transport network was flagged off by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday, but the TMC gave the event a miss after Banerjee’s name did not feature in the list of invitees.

“We had worked hard for the East-West Metro project.  We had to literally shed tears for it (approval). I felt bad, that a small metro route was inaugurated, but I was not even informed about the inauguration,” Banerjee said in the state assembly.

She was the railway minister from 2009 to 2011 in the UPA-2 government. The first phase of the metro project connects a 4.88-km stretch between Salt Lake Sector V—the IT hub of the city—and Salt Lake Stadium.

Reacting to Banerjee’s comment, Union minister Babul Supriyo said a senior railway official had gone to the state secretariat to invite her.