The beginning of Metro rail service in India can be traced back to 1984 when Kolkata Metro started its operations while opening for commercial services. It is the sixth longest operational metro network in India.
E Shreedharan and Kumar Keshav
Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) was set up jointly by the Government of India and Government of Delhi in May 1995. The construction for the same started in 1998, and the first commercial operation opened on December 24, 2002. The credit for timely completion and operations particularly phase 1 and phase 2 goes to ‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan.
Toeing the same line, Lucknow Metro completed all its project work well before the schedule and the public money was utilized to the hilt. An Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE) officer and a gold medallist engineer from IIT-Kanpur (M. Tech.) and IIT-Roorkee (B.E.), Kumar Keshav took over as LMRC Managing Director on August 18, 2014, and has not taken even a single leave since then. The whole project work so far has been completed under the astute leadership of the incumbent Managing Director in the last above four and a half years. Lucknow metro has achieved the distinction of being the fastest-ever execution of the metro project in the country.
After Delhi Metro, Noida Metro Rail Corporation (NMRC) and Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation (LMRC) are the two Metros which have matched the timelines and quality standard at par. There are six operational Metro network in the country namely Kolkata Metro, Delhi Metro, Hyderabad Metro, Chennai Metro, Namma Metro (Bengaluru Metro) and Noida Metro that cover a larger area than 23 km which falls under Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation (LMRC).
With round-the-clock work on the project, the LMRC MD ensured that the priority corridor was commissioned for a trial run on December 1, 2016. Work on priority corridor was executed in just over two years which is a record in itself. Even contemporary metro projects in the country have not been able to match up with the speed of deliverance as compared to LMRC’s strength in project execution. The Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation (LMRC) has become the only one in the country to have completed the entire construction before time.