Commuters elated as Delhi Metro's Blue, Pink line resume services

New Delhi: Several commuters on Wednesday arrived at the stations of the Delhi Metro's Blue and Pink, which began the services after a break of 171 days, and two days after the services on the Yellow line and Rapid Metro resumed on Monday.

People were seen standing in queues, to enter the metro station, following the protocol of the social distancing.

The DMRC has prepared plans in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure the protocol of social distancing, control overcrowding, and proper sanitisation of train rakes and station premises.

Speaking to IANS, Pradeep Bhanot, a contractual DTC employee and a resident of Jagatpuri area in east Dekhu said: "I am happy that the services of Blue Line has started, now I can easily commute from Preet Vihar to other places."

The resumption of service on these two additional lines comes two days after the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) started the services on the Yellow line and Gurugram's Rapid Metro as part of Stage 1 of "graded resumption of Metro services".

The Blue line runs from Dwarka Sector-21 to Electronic City (Noida), and Vaishali while the Pink line runs between Majlis Park and Shiv Vihar.

The services available on both of these Lines are between 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. along with Yellow/Rapid Lines which are already operational.

The re-opening of these two Lines ensures availability of nine of the existing 28 interchange Metro stations -- Rajouri Garden, INA Delhi Haat, Mayur Vihar Phase - I, Karkardooma, Rajiv Chowk, Yamuna Bank, Anand Vihar ISBT, Azadpur, and Sikandarpur.

In addition to these, three more routes -- Red Line, Green Line, and Violet Line -- will also resume services on Thursday.

Also, the rest of the remaining lines will also be re-opened under Stage-2 and Stage-3 of the Graded resumption plan on September 11 and 12, respectively.