New Delhi, Sep 19 (FN Representative) The Najafgarh-Dhansa Bus Stand section on the Grey Line of Delhi Metro was inaugurated on Saturday by Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, via video conferencing. The Dhansa Bus Stand is an underground station and an extension of the presently operational Dwarka-Najafgarh Corridor. On the occasion, Puri said, ‘The metro rail system has delivered a world class transportation system to our citizens. Delhi Metro has been a trailblazer, in that sense, with its ridership reaching 65 lakh per day during pre-Covid era, while the overall ridership in Metros across the country was 85 lakhs.’ ‘As we gradually recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, enhanced mobility requirements of the masses in our cities will play an important role in taking the economy forward,’ Puri said. He said the connections such as the one to Dhansa will play a vital role, in reaching to rural areas also. Puri said the gap between the rural and urban parts of Delhi is now being bridged with such connections which are going deep into the interior areas of the national capital. He also called upon the Delhi Government for expediting the approvals of pending projects of Delhi Metro.
The Minister mentioned that at present around 740 kms Metro line is operational in the country and with the Metro system seeing a massive surge in its network it will be more than 900 kms by 2022. More than 1000 kms of Metro lines is under construction in the country, and it will reach 2000 kms target in the near future, he said. Puri said the inauguration of today’s 1.2 kilometres stretch extension might be small from the point of view of network length, but from the perspective of providing enhanced connectivity to the interior parts of the national capital, this new extension is an important milestone. The Najafgarh-Dhansa Bus Stand corridor will take the Metro to many new suburban localities in the Najafgarh area of Delhi, he added. The newly opened Dhansa Bus Stand metro station on the grey line is an underground station and an extension of the presently operational Dwarka-Najafgarh Corridor. With the construction of the 1.2 km section between Najafgarh and Dhansa Bus Stand, the grey line now has four stations – Dwarka, Nangli, Najafgarh and Dhansa Bus Stand. The passengers services on this section commenced at 1700 hrs today. The Dhansa Bus Stand Metro station is the first-ever underground metro station of the Delhi Metro network to have an entire underground floor dedicated for parking vehicles, just below ground level.