Metro services should not be free, but fares should be low: Hardeep Singh Puri

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Friday said that he believed metro services should not be free but the fares must be low.

Puri was attending the Urban Mobility India (UMI) conference here.

"As a politician, I believe that the fare of the metro should be cheap and not free. While the work of Lucknow Metro was completed in three years and three months, we will complete the work of Kanpur Metro in two years and two months," he said according to an official release issued here.

Addressing the gathering, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that Delhi-NCR had been facing the problem of smog for the last one month and people were suffering from respiratory problems.

"The state government is continuously making efforts to ensuring better health in urban areas. This is one of the goals of United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals," he said.

A plan has been prepared to connect metro and metro lite in six cities of the state, including Kanpur, Varanasi, and Allahabad, he added.

After getting a nod from the Supreme Court, work will be started on Agra metro, he said, adding the government has also implemented an electronic vehicle policy in the state.

Uttar Pradesh has 652 urban bodies in which 23 per cent of the state's urban population resides.

He said work has been started in the 10 cities of the state which were selected by the Ministry of Urban Development to be developed as smart cities.

Earlier, he also released the booklet 'Metro Lite'. German Ambassador to India Walter J Lindner and several other guests were present on the occasion.