MiD DAY reporter Sidhant Maheshwari's 10 minute-journey became an hour-long nightmare, resulting in missed deadlines and bruised feet
MiD DAY reporter Sidhant Maheshwari's 10 minute-journey became an hour-long nightmare, resulting in missed deadlines and bruised feet
Myu00a0assignment for the day was to visit Lok Nayak Jai Prakash hospital at Daryaganj to meet injured supporters of Baba Ramdev, and I decided to take the metro at Patel Chowk and get down at New Delhi Metro Station.
I reached Patel Chowk at 3.10 pm and boarded the train coming from Qutab Minar at 3.14 pm. 
Several commuters remained stranded in overcrowded compartments
for 48 minutes.u00a0Pic/Mid Day
When after five minutes the train did not move and the doors remained open, I got irritated as I was getting late for my assignment. "Not again," I thought. Little did I know that those five minutes would extend to almost an hour and my day and my story would get ruined!
To be precise, it was 48 harrowing minutes in an overcrowded compartment with little space to stand straight or breathe free. I looked out and saw another stranded train on the other side of the platform with just emergency lights on. Commuters were getting down from that train and getting into my compartment in droves, filling out an already-crowded compartment. If that was not bad enough, someone stepped on my left foot, making me wince in pain. "Why don't I wear shoes to office," I grimaced.
My fellow passengers were also getting agitated. The lady sitting in front of me said technical faults in Delhi metro have become a regular affair. "And they call this world-class service," she sniggered. Some fellow passengers got down to check what was wrong. By now, the platform got more crowded than the metro. The officials at the platform were clueless. A few people took the escalator. Injured and irritated, I decided to stay put. Finally, after a 48-minute delay, the train started moving at a slow pace. I reached my destination at 4.12 pm, way too late for my assignment.
DMRC spokesman Anuj Dayal later said: "Metro services on Line 2 (yellow line of Delhi Metro) were affected today because of the tripping of power supply from the Gas Turbine Power Station of the Indraprastha power generation company which provides power to this corridor at the New Delhi Metro sub station." Now how do I explain that to my boss!
Check-ins at stations from friday
From Friday, fliers can finally check-in their luggage at two stations of the high-speed Airport Metro corridor with the Civil Aviation Ministry on Tuesday giving its nod for launching of the much-hyped services, over three months after trains began running on the line.u00a0 New Delhi and Shivaji Stadium stations will have six check-in counters each and fliersu00a0-- both domestic and internationalu00a0-- can avail the much-hyped facility from 5 am to 11 pm. This is the first such service to be introduced in the country. Air India, Kingfisher and Jet Airways will set up two counters each at both stations and passengers can check in their bags minimum two hours and maximum six hours prior the flight time. Baggage handling and passenger check-in (boarding passes) facility will be available at these two stations and passengers can get their boarding passes at the stations itself. "The baggage check-in system will give the passengers a hassle-free and convenient travel experience," a spokesman of Reliance Infra, whose consortium runs the Line, said. The 23-km Airport Metro connects Connaught Place with the IGI Airport in flat 18 minutes.
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