Delhi Metro: Mandi House-C Sec line opens tomorrow

The Mandi House-Central Secretariat line will be thrown open to commuters from Thursday — cutting down travel time on the violet and yellow lines and decongesting Rajiv Chowk station, besides providing a one-point transfer to commuters headed for Vaishali and Noida.
Three months behind schedule, the 3 km-long underground corridor will have one station in between — Janpath — and is expected to benefit some 70,000 commuters. Once operational, Mandi House will be the interchange point for three lines — Noida-Dwarka Sector 21, Central Secretariat-Badarpur and Jahangirpuri-Huda City Centre.
Urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu will flag off the first train from Mandi House at 9.30 am on Thursday.
Earlier, commuters had to negotiate a bustling Rajiv Chowk station to change trains. Mandi House as an interchanging station will take away 40% of the crowd from Rajiv Chowk, says DMRC, easing the load on the busiest station on the network. “The Central Secretariat-Mandi House section has received the mandatory safety clearance from the Commissioner of Metro Rail Safety and the line is expected to be opened for commercial services for the public this week itself,” Delhi Metro Rail Corporation spokesperson Anuj Dayal said on Tuesday.
The clearance comes months after Delhi Metro completed work on the station. It is among the first lines under phase III to be thrown open to the public.
The distance between Central Secretariat station--which is connected with the Badarpur-Central Secretariat (Violet line) as well as the Jahangirpuri-HUDA City Centre (Yellow line) — and Rajiv Chowk is 4 km. Once Mandi House becomes the transfer point, the distance will be three kilometres, shaving off several minutes of travel time. Metro officials say commuting from places like Nehru Place, Lajpat Nagar, Saket, All India Institute of Medical Science or Gurgaon to central and east Delhi will come down quite substantially.
“That one-kilometre distance is most crucial as it will save on travelling time by almost 7-8 minutes,” said a Delhi Metro Railway Corporation official.