Delhi Metro: Work on Pink Line's unfinished stretch delayed beyond Sept due to COVID

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A small unfinished stretch on the Delhi Metro's Pink Line was expected to be completed by September end this year but it got delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sources said. The Majlis Park-Shiv Vihar corridor or the Pink Line spans about 58 km with 38 stations. However, a small portion in east Delhi's Trilokpuri area has proved a bottleneck for the DMRC authorities for a long time, due to which, the line is disjointed for some distance there.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation authorities have been working on ironing out the land and other issues that has halted the connecting of the two sides on that stretch.

"But for the pandemic, we would have opened the missing link by September end. Now, we hope to do it by March 2021," an official source told PTI.

Pink Line was opened in multiple phases in 2018 and all station on the line have been opened.

"Work is in progress on this section in Trilokpuri which is still not connected on the corridor. The foundation work has been completed and pier casting work is going on. Preparations are in progress for pier cap casting as well. However, 17 houses have still not been evacuated and the matter is subjudice," another source said.

The total length of the stretch which "remains to be linked is 289 metres", he said.

The first section to be opened on the Pink Line was the over 20 km-long Majlis Park-Durgabai Deshmukh South Campus segment in March 2018, which for the first time connected the north and south campuses of the Delhi University on the metro network.

This was followed by inauguration of the stretch from South Campus to Lajpat Nagar; and then of the Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake segment and eventually of the Lajpat Nagar-Mayur Vihar Pocket 1 part of the line.

The bottleneck near Trilokpuri station had arisen due to multiple issues, including land acquisition, resulting in a portion of metro segment -- then about a few kilometres remaining incomplete -- rendering the Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake station a terminus.

Thus, currently a very small stretch between the Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake and Mayur Vihar Pocket 1 stations is left to be joined. No station remain to be opened, so this linking should happen soon, the source said.

The stations on Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake-Shiv Vihar stretch are Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake, East Vinod Nagar-Mayur Vihar-II , Mandawali-West Vinod Nagar, IP Extension, Anand Vihar ISBT, Karkardooma, Karkardooma Court, Krishna Nagar, East Azad Nagar, Welcome, Jaffrabad, Maujpur-Babarpur, Gokulpuri, Johri Enclave and Shiv Vihar. 

The main highlight of this section of Pink Line is the presence of three interchange stations -- Anand Vihar (with Blue Line), Karkardooma (with Blue Line) and Welcome (with Red Line).