The Line 4 or Noapara - Barasat Line of the Kolkata Metro is an 16.876 km long metro route from Noapara to Barasat in North 24 Parganas, which is under construction. It is being built by RVNL. It will run mostly at elevated viaducts but will descend underground after Jessore Road Station and will again ascend above after New Barrackpore Station. It will have an interchange station at the Dum Dum Airport with line 6 of the Kolkata metro. The future of the project beyond New Barrackpore is still in darkness due to land acquisition problem. After New Barrackpore Station, the metro route will pass through a land owned by a private company. When the project was sanctioned, then railway minister Mamata Banerjee vested this land for metro project but the company moved to High court against it making the future of the project beyond New Barrackpore in darkness. Till now no solution came. The construction company L&T was given the tender for construction of metro viaduts between New Barrackpore and Barasat but due to no hope of getting rid of land acquisition problem, they walked out from the construction.
An amount of Rs 127 crore contract to build this station along with a mostly at-grade 2.16 km section from the Bagjola Canal to the existing ramp of the Airport Circular Railway track was awarded to Senbo Engineering all the way back in June 2011. Since then, the station’s civil structure has been built, but work for the at-grade track section could not be started due to land acquisition issues along the line’s proposed alignment. But the rehabilitation work has completed, and the work is going smoothly. Recently girders were placed over Eastern Railway tracks.
Project Development
The project will be completed in three phases. The first phase of work from Noapara to Biman Bandar is under progress. In the second phase work from Biman Bandar to New Barrackpore will be done and in the last phase from New Barrackpore to Barasat work will be done. But the development work from New Barackpore to Barasat got struck for the last eight years since it was sanctioned because of encroachments and the AAI objected the elevated stretches from New Barrackpore to Barasat. Later, after objections from AAI, a decision was taken to convert this into an underground stretch. On 29 June, 2019 sanction for material modification for underground construction at an additional cost of was sent to Railway Board by Metro. For this underground tunneling AAI has agreed to shift their fuel tanks, buildings and cables and the project is expected to be started from 2020. Construction of an underground integrated station for Line 6 and Line 4 has begun at NSCBI Airport land just 150 metre away from the terminal building. Line 4 has been divided into three phases now.
