

KOLKATA: Three months after it was formed, the joint committee set up to resolve bottlenecks related to the East-West Metro will hold its first meeting on November 15. According to sources, members on the panel will have an elaborate discussion on line realignment, handing over a plot in Bowbazar to the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation Ltd ( KMRCL ) and the beginning of work at Duttabad.

The handing over of a godown, owned by the urban development and PHE departments, in Salt Lake may also feature prominently in the meeting.

In August this year, the Mamata Banerjee government had set up the high-power committee to solve the East-West Metro deadlock. By forming the committee, Mamata had given a clear signal on her intention to facilitate implementation of Kolkata's most ambitious infrastructure project. By making KMRCL managing director H K Sharma a member of the committee, the state government hoped to iron out problems plaguing the Rs 4,875-crore rail link project.

Among other members in the committee are chief secretary Sanjay Mitra, transport secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay, urban development secretary Debashis Sen and KMDA CEO Surendra Gupta.

"The first meeting of the high-power committee will certainly pave the way towards resolving various issues. It's going to be a good start and we would be attending it with an open mind," Sharma told TOI.

Several disagreements between the state and the central agencies have already caused huge cost and time overrun for the Metro project. The most crucial of them is the route realignment issue that has turned out to be the biggest bottleneck for the project. With the chief minister insisting on extending the route by 1.5 km - so that the north-south Metro corridor in Esplanade could be linked with East-West Metro - KMRCL has not been able to lay tracks after Sealdah.

Amid the indecision, KMRCL has been contemplating a proposal to truncate the original Sector V-Howrah Maidan plan till Sealdah station. KMRCL has written several letters to the state government about the impossibility of the realignment.

Though the committee was set up more than three months ago, the Mamata Banerjee government was unable to schedule the first meeting, thanks to the shifting of the state secretariat from Writers' Buildings to Nabanna in Howrah. The festival season was the other reason for the delay.

