BHOPAL: The country’s cleanest city Indore on Saturday became Madhya Pradesh’s first city and India’s 16th to get an operational metro rail service.Before addressing the Lokmata Devi Ahilyabai Mahila Sashaktikaran Maha Sammelan in Bhopal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually inaugurated the commercial run of Indore’s much-awaited metro rail service.“Today Madhya Pradesh has got its first metro rail service. Indore has already established a distinct identity in the world for cleanliness. Now Indore’s identity will be redefined by its metro rail service. The work on starting a metro rail service in Bhopal too is underway in an accelerated manner,” Modi said after virtually inaugurating the Indore metro’s first commercial run from Bhopal.Conceptualized to cover a stretch of more than 31 km with 28 stations in multiple phases at a total cost of Rs 7500 crore, around Rs 1520 crore has been spent on the 6-km long five stations-strong super priority corridor on which the commercial run started on Saturday.As a tribute to women power, the five stations on the 6-km long route have been named after famous queens and women warriors — Devi Ahilyabai Holkar, Rani Durgavati, Maharani Laxmi Bai, Rani Avantibai Lodhi and Veerangana Jhalkaribai.The inaugural trip of the Indore Metro only had women passengers, including Swachhata Didis (female sanitation workers) and women working with companies in Indore’s Super Corridor area, like Infosys and TCS.Many of the women wore Sindoori (vermillion coloured) sarees, as a salute to the recent Operation Sindoor by the Indian armed forces.Interestingly, the Indore Metro will operate free of cost for all passengers in the first week, followed by discounted ticket rates in the next two weeks (75% and 50% discount respectively).The inauguration of the Indore Metro, meanwhile, wasn’t bereft of its share of partisan politics, as the opposition Congress took credit for it.“Many years back while I was the Union minister and Babulal Gaur was a cabinet minister in the BJP government in MP, I called him to Delhi and said that we feel ashamed that MP doesn’t have a metro rail service. He told me that Rs 17 crore was needed to prepare the detailed project report (DPR), the money was sanctioned and the report was prepared. When I was the CM (in 2019), I had laid the foundation of the metro rail project (in Indore and Bhopal),” former CM Kamal Nath said in Chhindwara.
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