The Rail Land Development Authority, which is responsible for the commercial development of vacant Railway land for revenue generation, is to invite private participation for exploiting about 33,000 square meter of unused space in possession with the Kolkata Metro Railway. 
 
The authority intends to develop air-space and railway land at six Metro Railway stations - Central, Chandni Chowk, Mahanayak Uttam Kumar, New Garia and Masterda Surya Sen -  through a long-term revenue sharing model.
 
As per the available blueprint, while the Metro Railway will provide space on their premises, the private developers will be responsible for design, finance, construction, operation and maintenance of the project.
 
To that end, the RLDA will hold a meeting later this week with prospective developers in the city, before moving into the bidding process for allocation of space. "We will have an interactive meeting on June 11 to receive feedback from the developers. Subsequently, the bidding process will start in the next few months," an RLDA official said.
 
As per the available project information memorandums, 6,636 sq. metre of air-space is available at the Mahanayak Uttam Kumar station, while 318 sq. metre and 7121 sq. metre has been mandated for development at Chandni Chowk and Central stations, respectively.
 
On the southern extension of the Metro Railway, 9,000 sq. metre has been earmarked at New Garia station along with another 0.3 hectare (3,000 sq metre) at Masterda Surya Sen station. An official of the real estate services firm Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj, which has been roped into this venture, confirmed that developers had evinced interest but declined to divulge names.