Union minister of housing and urban affairs Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday said that the Andhra Pradesh government has been asked to update the comprehensive mobility report prepared in 2018 for Visakhapatnam for the approval process of a light metro rail project.
₹50,475 crore. (Andhra Pradesh Metro Rail Corporation Limited)” title=”In the Union Budget, Andhra Pradesh has an allocation of ₹50,475 crore. (Andhra Pradesh Metro Rail Corporation Limited)” />Khattar was replying to a starred question by Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) MP V Vijayasai Reddy in Rajya Sabha on the progress of the clearance and approvals required by the project.
The minister in his reply said the state government in January 2024 (during the chief ministership of YSRCP’s Jagan Mohan Reddy) had approached the Centre for the approval of 76.90 km of network length of Visakhapatnam Light Metro Rail Project in a public-private partnership (PPP) model.
“After preliminary examination, the government of Andhra Pradesh has been requested to update the comprehensive mobility plan (CMP) of 2018 submitted along with the proposal which is a prerequisite for appraisal of the project,” the minister said in his reply.
The answer comes after the states of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar in the Union Budget, received substantial allocations as expected after Narendra Modi secured a third term as the Prime Minister with the crucial support of the TDP and JD(U) the ruling parties of the respective states.
Incidentally, AP has an allocation of ₹50,475 crore including ₹15,000 crore for the construction of the capital city Amaravati.
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In recent replies to similar queries from MPs, the ministry has said that following the Metro Rail Policy-2017, respective state government is responsible for initiating metro rail projects including the preparation of a comprehensive mobility plan (CMP), alternative analysis report (AAR), detailed project report (DPR) among other documents.
The central government considers financial assistance for such projects in cities or urban agglomerates, based on the feasibility of the proposal and availability of resources, as and when posed by the concerned state government.
Currently in India, about 905 km of metro rail lines are operational and 959 km is under construction.
On the other hand, soon after the Lok Sabha election result in June, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar had sought the approval of four metro projects in the cities of Muzaffarpur, Gaya, Darbhanga and Bhagalpur. A metro project in Patna is under construction.
However, multiple studies including one by parliamentary committee of housing and urban affairs tabled in the both the houses in 2021-22 found that faulty planning and lack of integration with other modes of transportation and urban planning have made the projects unsustainable.
The report found that the actual ridership of the metros was way lower than the projected figures, especially in smaller cities.
N Seshadri, vice-president of Infrastructure Development Corporation (Karnataka), in his article in the India Infrastructure Report 2023 report noted how in Bengaluru’s metro rail authority prepared the city mobility plan without conducting any traffic surveys but used an existing traffic model. Further, the report highlighted how many cities just to get central government grants, prepared dodgy Alternative Analysis reports by fudging numbers for metro projects.
