Revanth for Airport Metro via Old City

Hyderabad: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy is likely to opt for a Metro Rail route that will address commuters’ needs better rather than the Raidurg-Shamshabad airport route that the previous BRS government had pushed hard for.

The state government will scrap or at least defer the Raidurg-airport route and instead push for a line between Lakdikapul and Financial District besides completing the JBS-Falaknuma corridor and extending the same to the airport via Pahadi Shareef, thus covering large parts of the Old City as well as the tech corridor.

The Chief Minister on Tuesday dropped hints of the revolutionary change, perhaps his first imprint on matters relating to urban development, at a meeting held with the seven legislators of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) on Old City development at the Secretariat.

“We have to see which route is more useful to passengers, particularly those commuting to the IT corridor. The routes should be useful to passengers and their relatives who go in large numbers to the airport and cannot afford other modes of transport,” the Chief Minister is said to have pointed out.

Sources close to the top leadership told Deccan Chronicle that the Chief Minister had his doubts over the proposed airport Metro Rail route along the Outer Ring Road and he was of the strong view that it would only help a few realtors who have built huge land banks. The BRS government was so keen on the project that it preferred an EPC (engineering procurement construction) contract with total funding by the state government in place of a public private partnership.

The newly-created Hyderabad Airport Metro Rail Limited had called for tenders for the Rs 7,000-crore project and construction major L&T had bagged the contract in competitive bidding. “The ORR sufficient to handle the airport-bound traffic and in a majority of cases those who use cabs get reimbursements from their office,” a Metro Rail official said.

The HMRL had earlier sent a proposal to the Centre asking for funds to build the Lakdikapul to BHEL, Miyapur-BHEL, Allwyn Crossroads to Gachibowli via Botanical Gardens routes with about Rs 9,100 crore outlay. “We had proposed to bear 50 per cent of expenditure,” the official said adding that Revanth Reddy’s new proposal would be less expensive as several components could be ignored and give priority to routes with high utility value.