Kolkata Metro Opened on 24 October 1984 as India's First Metro, a 3.4 km Line From Esplanade to Bhowanipore, and Now Runs 73.42 km on Five Lines, Including a Tunnel Under the Hooghly

India’s first metro train service began on 24 October 1984, on 3.4 km of track between Esplanade and Bhowanipore, which is now Netaji Bhavan, in Kolkata. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) describes it as three intermediate stations between those two ends, and Metro Railway Kolkata’s own history says five stations in all. In a release of 24 September 2026, PIB counted 73.42 km, 58 stations and five colour-coded lines as of 2025, and Metro Railway’s General Manager said the network carried 23.60 crore passengers in 2025-26.

Kolkata is also where an Indian metro first went under a major river. This article sets out how the first line was built, how it reached its full length in 1995, and how the east-west line crossed the Hooghly, using Metro Railway Kolkata’s history page, the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), PIB and the press record. For the national picture, see India’s metro networks.

An idea from 1949, a master plan from 1971

Metro Railway Kolkata’s history credits Dr B. C. Roy, then Chief Minister of West Bengal, with conceiving an underground railway for the city in 1949. A team of French experts surveyed the idea, and nothing came of it, the history says. It adds that roads covered only 4.2 per cent of Calcutta’s surface then, against 25 per cent in Delhi.

The Metropolitan Transport Project (Railways) was set up in 1969 and concluded that the city needed a mass rapid transit system. Its 1971 master plan envisaged five lines totalling 97.5 km. The north-south axis between Dum Dum and Tollygunge, 16.45 km, came first, and work on it was sanctioned on 1 June 1972. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi laid the foundation stone on 29 December 1972, and construction started in 1973 to 1974, according to the Metro Railway history. Metro Rail Today adds that Soviet and East German specialists helped with the planning.

Older proposals exist, and the sources differ on their date. Metro Rail News and Metro Rail Today say a committee of the Imperial Legislative Council in 1919 recommended a metro that would pass under the Hooghly. ThePrint dates the British plan to 1921, and an IIM Calcutta professor it quoted said the idea was dropped after soil tests showed a cost six times that of London’s Thames tunnel. None of those plans was built.

What the builders were up against, and the day it opened

The official history lists the obstacles: money was short until 1977 to 1978, underground pipes and cables had to be moved, courts issued injunctions, and materials arrived irregularly. UrbanRail.net notes that the line was dug mostly by cut-and-cover, meaning an open trench roofed over afterwards, which is why its stations sit close to the surface.

On 24 October 1984 the first section opened to the public. On the station order that Metro Rail News gives for the Blue Line, the three stops between the two ends were Park Street, Maidan and Rabindra Sadan. A second stretch, 2.15 km from Dum Dum to Belgachia in the north, followed on 12 November 1984. Passengers could ride south as far as Tollygunge, now Mahanayak Uttam Kumar, from 29 April 1986, which brought the service to 9.79 km and 11 stations.

Onmanorama’s profile of E. Sreedharan, later the managing director of the Delhi Metro, says he was appointed deputy engineer on the Calcutta project; his later work is described in tuput’s piece on the Delhi Metro.

The line took until 1995 to run end to end

The isolated northern stretch drew few riders, and Metro Railway suspended it from 26 October 1992. It reopened on 13 August 1994 as part of a longer section, Dum Dum to Shyambazar. Esplanade to Chandni Chowk opened on 2 October 1994, two more sections on 19 February 1995, and a 1.80 km gap in the middle was closed on 27 September 1995, when services began over the whole Dum Dum to Tollygunge line. UrbanRail.net counts 17 stations on that line, 15 of them underground, with platforms 160 m long built for eight-car trains and power from a 750-volt third rail.

For the next 14 years the system stayed at about 16.5 km. Extensions then ran south to Kavi Nazrul in August 2009 and Kavi Subhash (New Garia) in October 2010, and north to Noapara in July 2013 and Dakshineswar in February 2021. PIB now gives the Blue Line as 28 km from Kavi Subhash to Noapara plus 4.14 km on to Dakshineswar, about 32 km in all.

The east-west line and the tunnel under the Hooghly

The 1971 master plan had already marked an east-west corridor. The government sanctioned it by an order of 30 July 2008, KMRC says, to join Howrah and Sealdah stations, which KMRC says handle about 24 lakh passengers a day between them. Where the north-south line was dug open from the street, the Green Line’s underground stretch was bored with earth pressure balance tunnel boring machines, which seal the tunnel face as they dig, so that traffic above could carry on. KMRC says its line runs 16.6 km in all, 10.8 km underground and 5.8 km elevated, on 12 stations, with trains of six air-conditioned cars on standard gauge.

PIB says the twin tunnels under the river are 520 m long and were built through stiff clayey silt in a record 66 days, about 350 m downstream of Howrah Bridge. At the deepest point the tunnel is 16 m under the riverbed, Eastern Railway’s chief public relations officer told ThePrint in 2023, in water averaging 30 m deep. Officials told the Tribune a train needs about 45 seconds to cross the river section. The first test train went through on 12 April 2023, an official statement said.

On 6 March 2024 the Prime Minister inaugurated the 4.8 km Howrah Maidan to Esplanade section and took a ride through the tunnel, according to the Prime Minister’s Office. The release calls it the first underwater metro transportation tunnel under any major river in the country, and names Howrah as India’s deepest metro station. PIB puts that station’s depth at about 30 m; an Eastern Railway officer said 33 m in 2023, before it opened. The Tribune gave the section’s cost as Rs 4,965 crore. Metro Railway’s history records that the section was opened to the public on 15 March 2024.

The Green Line’s last link, 2.45 km from Esplanade to Sealdah, opened on 22 August 2025 and joined the western and eastern halves. KMRC’s general manager had said in 2023 that the line would cut the trip between Howrah and Salt Lake from one to one and a half hours by road to 30 to 40 minutes. That was a projection made before the line was complete.

Building under a city that was already there

ThePrint’s 2023 report records how the engineers handled the old city above them. A millimetre-by-millimetre survey protected the foundations of the Bankim Setu flyover near Howrah, and the tunnels passed under the Brabourne Road flyover. KMRC’s general manager said the alignment met 150-year-old buildings, which were monitored for shift and tilt, and residents of some were moved out for a time. KMRC’s general manager for civil works said no untoward incident occurred during tunnelling.

Between Sealdah and Esplanade, KMRC’s civil chief said, an unusual aquifer flooded the tunnels on three dates at three places, and the corporation took advice from foreign consultants. ThePrint also cited media reports that seepage cracked 12 buildings at Madan Dutta Lane in Bowbazar in 2022. The same stretch is the one that opened last, in August 2025.

Five lines in September 2026

Metro Railway Kolkata’s history lists the other lines. The Purple Line’s Joka to Taratala section was inaugurated on 30 December 2022 and opened to the public on 2 January 2023, and the line was inaugurated to Majerhat on 6 March 2024. The Orange Line was inaugurated from Kavi Subhash to Hemanta Mukhopadhyay on 6 March 2024, and on to Beleghata on 22 August 2025. The Yellow Line, from Noapara to Jai Hind Bimanbandar for the airport, was inaugurated the same day as the Orange extension, 22 August 2025, All India Radio reported, and the Prime Minister rode it from Jessore Road station.

PIB’s September 2026 release gives the Purple Line as 7.74 km of a planned 14 km corridor to Esplanade, with 6.26 km still under construction between Majerhat and Esplanade. That is the latest official network total tuput found as of 6 November 2026. Metro Railway projects a network of about 130 km in the coming years, according to the General Manager’s Independence Day speech as reported by Metro Rail News and PIB. At 23.60 crore passengers a year, the 2025-26 total comes to about 6.5 lakh journeys a day on an even spread, tuput’s own arithmetic from the PIB figure.

The tunnel runs close to the Howrah Bridge, and the older surface system is covered in Kolkata’s trams. In June 2026 the Union Railway Minister announced that 60 new-generation rakes would join the Kolkata Metro over the next four to five years, PIB reports.