TNI Bureau: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inaugurated India’s first under-river metro tunnel built under Hooghly River in Kolkata.

After inaugurating, the Prime Minister also took metro ride in Kolkata metro along with school students.

The 4.8 km stretch metro tunnel, which has been built at a cost of Rs 4,965 crore, connects Howrah Maidan to Esplanade.

According to the Kolkata Metro, the E-W metro corridor has the distinction of the very first under river transportation tunnel in India below the River Hooghly, being 520m long and 13m below the river bed and one of the deepest metro stations at Howrah, which is 30 m deep below the ground.

The prime minister also inaugurated a 5.4km new metro corridor from Kavi Subhash to Hemanta Mukhopadhyay in east Kolkata, a 1.2km extension of the Purple Line metro up to Majerhat, Pune Metro from Ruby Hall Clinic to Ramwadi stretch, Kochi Metro Rail Phase I Extension project (Phase IB) from SN Junction Metro station to Tripunithura Metro station, Agra Metro’s stretch from Taj East Gate to Mankameshwar and Duhai-Modinagar (North) section of Delhi-Meerut RRTS Corridor from the same venue.

Modi also laid the foundation stone of extension of Pune Metro Rail project phase 1 between Pimpri Chinchwad Metro-Nigdi.