Union Minister of state for Urban Development Babul Supriyo today took stock of the progress of East West Metro project and visited some places where the work was facing impediments.
Supriyo visited Duttabad, where the shifting of slum-dwellers has held up work for the Salt Lake Sector V to Howrah Maidan and talked to the residents as well as officials of KMRC, the agency implementing the project.
"I have met the people here and they have exhibited a very positive energy towards the project's completion. I am hopeful of an early solution and completion of the project," Supriyo, whose ministry holds a stake in the project, told reporters following the visit.
He, however, lamented that West Bengal government officers, who, he said, were requested to attend the visit and a meeting with him, did not turn up.
"If for the rehabilitation of 60 families I have to go up to the chief minister, I am ready to do that. But I know there are reservations about my being a half minister. It is up to her to decide whether she (Mamata Banerjee) will meet a half minister.
"May be because I am a half minister that they (officials) did not give much importance, but it is out of the will to do something useful that they had been requested to attend," the singer-turned MP, who was made a Union minister in November, said in an indirect reference to West Bengal PHE minister Subrata Mukherjee's dig at him that he was a 'half-pant minister' as he is only a Minister of State.
