August 22nd, 1996, inaugurated by H.D.Deve Gowda. It was named as Chalukya express from July 1st, 2000. Actually I remembered that because an article very similar to the article you shared came up at that time. At that time too there were demands for restoration of the MG Mahalakshmi and merge it with the BG Mahalakshmi (KOP-CSTM) and give a dedicated SBC-CSTM train. But the BG train was already running to KOP and it wasn't possible to merge it without KOP losing the train. So, a new tri-weekly dedicated train was started for SBC in a slightly different slot.