Officials convince KCR against underground Metro

Hyderabad: Hyderabad Metro Rail officials have halted works near the Legislative Assembly and Mozzam Jahi Market and have started a realignment survey to avoid the heritage structures.

This follows Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s statement in the Legislative Assembly that his government would not allow demolition of heritage structures for the Metro Rail project, nor allow the Metro to pass near the heritage structures.

While L&T officials are coming up with a realignment plan to avoid Sultan Bazaar and other heritage structures, they are concerned that more properties will have to be demolished for realignment. L&T is willing to take up the realignment, provided the state government agrees to bear the additional expenditure.

Officials from both HMR and L&T met Mr Rao twice at the Secretariat on the issue and were successful in convincing him against making the Metro “underground”. Mr Rao, who initially was keen on an underground Metro near the heritage structures, finally agreed to the fresh proposal made by officials to realign the Metro route instead of going underground, which might have imposed an additional burden of over Rs 4,000 crore.

Officials from HMR and L&T remained tight-lipped on the issue, saying that nothing had been finalised about changing the route. Sources, meanwhile, said that as per the realignment plan, the Metro route would be diverted towards Kacheguda or Ramkoti to avoid Sultan Bazaar and Badichowdi.

The route would also be diverted to the backside of the Legislative Assembly towards Red Hills area to avoid Assembly and the Martyrs Memorial.