South Central Railway accused of blocking Hyderabad Metro Rail project

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday accused the South Central Railway of blocking the Hyderabad Metro Rail project under one pretext or the other.

He took up the issue with Union Railway minister Suresh Prabhu when the latter called on him at the Secretariat on Monday.

Mr Rao strongly objected to the SCR demanding Rs 10 crore each for the eight tracks that the Metro Rail had to cross at various locations in the name of unreasonable “traffic block charges”.

He also complained against the SCR for failing to hand over 10 small parcels of land near the Secunderabad Railway station amounting to 2 acre, to the, government despite being paid Rs 35 crore so far for the government to take up road widening and to facilitate Metro works.

The elevated Metro tracks have to cross the SCR tracks at eight locations. “Discussions have been going on for the last three years between the government, Railways and SCR officials. The SCR is demanding payment of ‘traffic block charges’ that are computed at around Rs 10 crore per railway crossing. Incidentally, this is more than the cost of a road-overbridge at each location. The Railway Board had categorically stated that the Metro Rail would only be levied land lease/licensing charges, supervision charges and percentage charges,” Mr Rao pointed out.

He also told the Union minister that the government had already paid Rs 25 crore towards the above charges more than 18 months ago.

“No other charges like traffic/power block charges were indicated by the Railway Board earlier. It has been ascertained from other Metro projects that no traffic block charges were levied by SCR for Chennai Metro crossings and by South-Western Railway for Bangalore Metro crossings, and only nominal charges were levied for the Mumbai Metro by Western Railway. Further, the Railway Board had categorically indicated that ‘indirect cost/detention cost on account of traffic, and power block and speed restrictions shall not be levied on government organisations, for public use,” Mr Rao said.

He added that the HMR was a public purpose project undertaken by the state government. “Despite bringing all these facts to their notice, the SCR officials are insisting on payment of traffic block charges. The work on Bharatnagar Metro Rail crossing has been held up for many months due to prolonged correspondence on the issue and this is on the critical path of the project. We have mobilised all resources to take up the work and the delay in executing the work of ROBs has badly affected the Metro project. The project developer L&T is raising huge claims for not getting the Right of Way (RoW) and for men and machinery remaining idle,” Mr Rao informed.

He also brought to the notice of Mr Prabhu that the SCR owed total dues of Rs 33.70 crore to the GHMC in the form of various taxes and sought his intervention for payment of dues.