The fissure in the civil structure of Noida City Centre Metro station on Dwarka Sector 21 to Noida City Centre corridor has caught Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) unawares.
DMRC is unable to answer the time the repair work at the station will take. According to the spokesperson, if the fault is nothing major, platform 1 will be operational in another eight to ten days. “Till now, no major reasons have been found and for the safety of the passengers, it was mandatory to shutdown the platform,” said the spokesperson.
The development of fissure in the civil structure of the platform number 1 of Noida City Centre station has raised critical questions on the quality of construction work for the station.
Not just this station, many other Metro stations have been designed in the similar fashion. Sources inform that there were problems with the station design since the construction stages itself.
“At the time when the construction work of the station was given final touches, there was a proposal to keep two more entry/exit gates, which was later rejected. The faults in the design of the station became apparent when the station came into operations and with the increasing crowd at the station, the need was felt for extra entry/exit gates,” said a source with DMRC.
According to the Delhi Metro officials, the engineers have not cited design as the reason for the fault, but they are yet to ascertain the reasons due to which the station structure was recently disbalanced. A Delhi Metro spokesperson admitted that the platform 1 of the station has been shut down due to technical and construction related reasons but this is not a major issue. Train operations are being carried out without any hassles from platform number 2.
“Metro engineers are in the process to ascertain the reasons for the fault and will be repaired soon,” said the spokesperson.