India / Delhi Metro resumes services on Blue & Pink line from 7-11 am & 4-8 pm

New Delhi: Delhi Metro's Blue Line and Pink Line resumed services with curtailed operation timings on Wednesday after being closed for 171 days due to the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said.

Trains are to operate in batches of four-hour each from 7-11 AM in the morning and 4-8 PM in the evening in the first stage.

"The Blue and Pink lines resumed services today. Slowly and steadily, Delhi Metro will be back to take you places! #MetroBackOnTrack," the DMRC tweeted.

On Monday, the Delhi Metro had resumed services on its Yellow Line, with curtailed operations and a slew of measures for safety of passengers and employees.

Metro services in Delhi-NCR were closed since March 22 due to the pandemic.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had recently issued guidelines allowing the Delhi Metro to resume operations in a graded manner, following which the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had said it would be done in three stages from September 7-12.

Under stage one, Yellow Line or Line 2 and Rapid Metro were made operational with restricted service hours.

Trains are to operate in batches of four-hour each from 7-11 am and 4-8 pm in the first stage, it said.

While nearly 15,500 passengers availed the Yellow Line and Rapid Metro combined on Monday, the figures on Tuesday after the the end of services stood at about 17,600, officials said.

The DMRC said in a statement that nearly 200 smart cards were sold on Tuesday.

"As part of the stage-I of graded resumption of metro services, the Delhi Metro will resume operations after 171 days on its Blue Line i.e, Line-3/4 from Dwarka Sec -21 to Electronic City/Vaishali (65.35 km, 58 stations) and Pink Line i.e, Line-7 from Majlis Park to Shiv Vihar (57.58 km, 38 stations) from tomorrow," the DMRC said in a statement.

Services will be available on both of these lines from 7-11 am and from 4-8 pm along with Yellow Line and Rapid Line which are already operational as per the given timings, it said.

The reopening of these two lines will ensure availability of nine of the existing 28 interchange Metro stations from Wednesday, including Rajouri Garden (Blue Line & Pink Like); INA Delhi Haat (Yellow & Pink Line); Mayur Vihar Phase – I (Blue Line & Pink Line); Rajiv Chowk (Blue Line & Yellow Line); Anand Vihar ISBT (Blue Line & Pink Line) and Sikanderpur (Yellow Line & Rapid Metro), the DMRC said.

The list of gates which will remain open for entry of passengers at each station along with all necessary updates are available on the home page of Delhi Metro's official website www.delhimetrorail.com for easy access of the passenger information, it said.

"DMRC will be running 66 trains on Blue Line performing around 478 train trips during morning and evening hours on September 9-10," the DMRC said in a statement.

Similarly, 27 trains with approximately 228 trips from Majlis Park to Mayur Vihar Pocket-1 and 13 trains with nearly 291 trips from Trilok Puri-Sanjay Lake to Shiv Vihar sections of Pink line will be put into service on these two days, it said, adding the Pink Line operates in two sections.