At present India does not produce the special coaches used in the Metro Rail. Lack of adequate funds has hampered purchase of new rakes, leading to a scarcity of functional rakes. Authorities admit that many of the problems plaguing the Metro Rail were due to faulty coaches, most of which are worn out with age. There are also allegations of lack of maintenance of the coaches, but authorities blamed unavailability of spare parts for it.

The Metro service, started in 1980, runs a distance of 25 km between Tollygunge and Dum Dum. There is a proposal to extend the service till Garia on the southern outskirts in two years' time.

Leftist Trade union leader Dilip Mukherjee told IANS that the main hindrance in the smooth running of the service was lack of coaches. He said the minister had been told that the need of the hour was a substantial number of new rakes.

At the time of its inception, Metro authorities had procured 144 coaches instead of the required 232. "From the very onset the problem of shortage has been there. Now over the years, lack of maintenance and timely replacement of the worn out coaches has brought down the quality of service," Mukherjee said. The Railway Minister is believed to have instructed the newly appointed Metro general manager to send a proposal to the Railway Board seeking new coaches. "However, the minister agreed that a permanent solution to the problem lay not in importing the rakes from time to time but setting up a manufacturing unit for such specialised coaches," Mukherjee said.

The setting up of a separate Metro coach-manufacturing unit will not only save precious foreign exchange but also remove the problem of procuring spare parts.During the meeting, Metro engineers told Banerjee that spare parts were being bought from several companies abroad, but timely availability of the required parts was turning out to be major drawback in carrying out maintenance. The Metro Rail's services have had to be suspended often because of faults in rakes or tracks that could have been overcome with proper maintenance. People using the tube seem to have accepted this way of functioning to the extent that sometimes trains run with the doors open on the passengers' insistence.

-- IANS