A day after the intense protests at Mallickpore Railway Station that led to the injury of a policeman, the Sealdah Division deployed additional security forces at some of its stations to prevent similar incidents.

Teams of railway police were spotted at Mallickpore, Betberia, and Ghutiari Sharif that became boiling points with intensive protests by mammoth gatherings of agitators demanding resumption of local train services.

Apart from the four places that witnessed widespread agitation yesterday, additional security personnel were also seen at other railway stations of the division including the one at Sealdah.

According to sources in the railway, security has been enhanced by the authorities at stations that are vulnerable. In addition to enhanced security arrangements at various stations, the Eastern Railway is also mulling over to increase the number of staff special services.

The zonal railway has decided to run 150 additional staff special local train services to the existing 354. As informed by official sources, around 100 such services will be increased in Sealdah Division while 50 are to be added in Howrah Division. Meanwhile, the Kolkata Metro Railway has decided to increase the number of ‘Maintenance Special’ services from 28 June.

The decision, according to the Kolkata Metro Railway office, has been taken considering the increasing footfall at the city’s underground transport system. Not only have the number of services been increased to 62 instead of 40, even the timings of the first and the last metro have been advanced and the interval between two trains have been decreased.

From Monday, the city metro will operate its first service at 8.30 am instead of 9 am and the last service will run at 11.30 with an extension of 15 minutes during morning hours. In the evening, the metro will leave from Dakshineswar and Kavi Subhash at 3:45 pm like the earlier schedule but the last service has been extended by half an hour and will be operated till 6.30pm instead of 6pm.

Also, unlike earlier when the time gap between two arriving metros was 15 minutes, the interval has been brought down to 11-12 minutes from Monday to Saturday.