A reality check on Hyderabad’s Airport Metro Express Premium

The decision to start two phases has put the government under the scanner

The decision by the Telangana Government to lay the foundation stone to build the 31-km metro line to the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) in Shamshabad from Mindspace Junction/Raidurg, at a cost of ₹6,250 crore, has certainly generated considerable excitement, but a reality check is in order.

The airport metro decision came on the heels of the government seeking the Centre’s funding to take up “jointly with external funding” a 26 km-long elevated metro rail to connect Lakdikapul in the city centre to BHEL-Ramachandrapuram in the suburbs. It is also to run across 5 km between Nagole to L.B. Nagar suburbs connecting two terminal stations of phase one of the project and it is estimated to cost ₹8,453 crore. 

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is set to lay the foundation stone for the mostly elevated airport fast metro and a small section underground inside the airport without an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractor in place, unlike phase one of the Hyderabad Metro Rail project built across three traffic corridors of 69.2 km.

The foundation stone for phase one was laid by the then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy in 2012, a good two years after the L&TMRH (L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad) had bagged the contract for ₹14,132 crore under one of the world’s largest Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode for the metro. It took loan from public sector banks and obtained Viability Gap Funding (VGF) of ₹1,458 crore by the Central Government, of which ₹254 crore is yet to be released.

The State government had earlier offered “much better incentives than what was offered to L&TMRH” for corporates if they are ready to take up the Airport Metro as PPP work but there were no takers. Now, the bids – technical or financial bids for the Airport Metro — are yet to be called for inviting companies to take up the project under the EPC mode. 

The Hyderabad Airport Metro Rail Limited (HAML), the special purpose vehicle, has just called for tenders for appointment of a general consultant (GC) for the project to oversee the work of tender documentation, reviewing the detailed project report (DPR) prepared by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) five years ago, planning, quality control, and so on. The GC could be in place by mid-January.

Once the bids are called, it could take about 45 days before firms are shortlisted for technical evaluation to check if they have had the expertise and the muscle to pull it off. A similar time period is likely for the financial bids when the ‘L1’ or the lowest bidder will be chosen.