Municipal Administration Minister KTR holds Airport Metro review meeting

He instructed the departments and organizations concerned to hand over the identified government properties to Hyderabad Airport Metro Ltd immediately to start the construction activity.

Hyderabad: The Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MA&UD) Minister, KT Rama Rao instructed the departments and organizations concerned to hand over the identified government properties to Hyderabad Airport Metro Ltd immediately to start the construction activity.

The Minister also directed the GMR Airport authorities to hand over 48 acres of land in the airport area for construction of Metro Rail depot.

---

At a review meeting on the Airport Metro and other Metro expansion projects here on Thursday, Rama Rao requested the Chief Secretary, A Santhi Kumari, to hold periodical coordination meetings and facilitate expeditious execution of the Airport Metro project. Instructions were also given to pursue with the senior officers concerned in Government of India for approval of the Rs 9,100 crore BHEL-Lakdikapul and Nagole-LB Nagar (36 km) project as a joint venture project of GoTS & GoI.

A detailed power point presentation was made by Metro Rail MD, NVS Reddy at the meeting.

The Minister directed NVS Reddy to start surveys of all the new metro corridors recently approved by the Cabinet and get Preliminary Project Reports/ Detailed Project Reports ready in the next few months for sending them to Government of India.

He advised Special Chief Secretary Finance, K. Ramakrishna Rao and MA&UD Special Chief Secretary Arvind Kumar to explore different funding options for the new metro projects. He also instructed the Collectors of Hyderabad, Medchal and Sangareddy districts to identify vacant government land parcels nearer to the existing and proposed metro stations for developing multi level car parking complexes as desired by the Chief Minister.

Broadly explaining the vision of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to make Hyderabad a Global City with world class infrastructure facilities, the Minister emphasized on the importance of public transportation in reducing congestion and pollution and turning the city into a globally competitive city to attract huge investments and talent.

Rama Rao said by introducing more coaches, improving feeder services, and developing better footpaths, the current metro ridership of 5 lakh per day can be doubled and vehicular congestion reduced in the city.

In a separate meeting held with Akbaruddin Owaisi, the Minister directed the Metro Rail MD to expedite land acquisition process in the Old City metro corridor and start construction there and also plan for further extension of the line to the airport from Falaknuma.