By IANS,
Kolkata : The West Bengal government has proposed to do away with the planned Bowbazar Metro Station of its East West Metro project here due to “land acquisition problems”, a top bureaucrat said Monday.
M. Ramachandran, secretary, ministry of urban development, gave the information during the sidelines of an interactive session organised by the Merchants Chamber of Commerce here. He had come to attend the second board meeting of the East West Metro project.
The board is evaluating the project proposal.
“Due to some technical aspects, like maintaining minimum distance between two stations, we have to evaluate this proposal before arriving at any decision,” he added.
The government had planned to shift tenants with shops in and around the proposed Bowbazar metro station area and local residents were also given a similar proposal. But the plan came to a standstill after the state government faced problems with the rehabilitation package when the tenants said they did not want to shift far away.
Earlier, the state government thought of shifting the tenants and shops to Rajarhat, beside the satellite township of Salt Lake.
The metro project will cover 13.7 km from Howrah to Sector V in Salt Lake. Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC) is expected to provide 45 percent of the project cost as soft loan. The state and central government will fund the rest. Close to 300 shops will be affected by the project.