The much-delayed Hyderabad Metro Rail project will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 28 November when the PM will be here in connection with the US-sponsored three-day Global Entrepreneurs’ Summit (GES). Indications to this effect from the PMO were received by the Telangana government, according to sources in Hyderabad.
The PM would be in the city on 28 November to launch the GES which would be attended by US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump.
The PMO, which is monitoring the delayed Hyderabad Metro Rail, is of the view that the GES would be the best time to launch the project so that it can be showcased before the global business delegates who throng the
city.
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), who was in Delhi last week for his eye surgery, wrote a letter to the PM seeking his appointment for the Metro project inauguration during his visit here in November. Now that the PM’s schedule is confirmed, the state government has started last-mile efforts to finish all the work relating to the first phase of the Metro rail, stretching 30 km out of the total distance of 70 km project.
KCR, who returned here on Thursday, set up an official panel headed by his son and Municipal Administration Minister K.T. Rama Rao to speed up the first phase of Metro rail works, from Nagole to Miyapur via busy Ameerpet junction. N.V.S.S. Reddy, Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited (HMRL) managing director, told The Sunday Guardian on Friday that all works would be in place by 1 November.
A project monitoring cell within the PMO, which is tracking all ongoing Metro rails in the country, has been pressuring HMRL and L&T, which is executing the Rs 15,000 crore project, as it had already overshot its original completion time by two to three years. As a result, the Centre had to pay more in the form of viability gap funding (VGF) to L&T, the contractor.
L&T has been awarded this project by the then Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy-led Congress government in AP in 2008 through the DBFOT (design, build, finance, operate and transfer) model. Then, the estimated cost of the project was around Rs 12,000 crore and was to be completed by 2013.
However, delay in releasing VGF amount and later the bifurcation of AP delayed the project.