Will Telangana Govt fund remaining Old City metro rail stretch?

Completion of the the Metro rail stretch from M.G.B.S to Falaknuma as part of the Phase-I construction, is in focus now as the Telangana government announced to build metro rail line from the airport in Shamshabad through old city of Hyderabad. Officials said that it is not possible to build the line from M.G.B.S. to Falaknuma without the State government’s help.

With Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy firm on building the metro rail to the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) at Shamshabad through the Old City from Falaknuma, the focus is definitely on completing the remaining stretch of about 5.5 km from MGBS (Imlibun) to Falaknuma belonging to the first phase of the Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) project.

It is easier said than done. After the Majlis Party had successfully stalled the project from being built into the Old City, ostensibly to protect heritage and religious structures when the first phase was being built, the route was in limbo for years, till all of a sudden the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Government got a re-survey done.

HMR was just about getting ready to issue land acquisition notices to more than 1,000 property owners between MGBS-Falaknmua when this process too did not take off with funds availability being the issue. The Congress Government apparently wants the first leg builder-operator-concessionnaire L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH) to complete the work but the latter is not prepared to do so pointing out to the ₹5,500 crore loss in the project.

“The agency did not take up the work then because the right of way was not given to them for 12 years,” pointed out senior officials, pleading anonymity. HMR has now scaled down the cost of building the 5.5 km to ₹1,500 crore from about ₹2,000 crore by reducing the station sizes and real estate component unlike in the rest of the 69.2 km route where the metro rail is running across the three corridors in the twin cities.

“If the L&TMRH is not going to it, the Government will have to find resources to build up to Falaknuma. It is not possible to take up work without Government help. The stretch from Falaknuma to the airport can be taken up as separate work,” they said.

The only silver lining is that the remaining ₹254 crore of the Viability Gap Funding (VGF) for the first phase from the Central Government out of the 10% of the total project cost of ₹14,132 crore as was promised under the PPP – public, private partnership mode is likely to be released if the Old City line is built as was originally conceived.

Even if the go ahead comes now, it is going to be quite a task considering the land acquisition to be taken up, road widening, calling for tenders and selection of the contractor before works can be grounded for just this stretch. If all this is likely to take a while, the proposed construction from Falaknuma to the Airport terminal touching Chandrayanagutta, Jalpally, and others, requires a fresh detailed project report for 13 km costing more than ₹3,000 crore.