Chandrababu Naidu makes fresh plea to centre for metro rail in Vizag and Vijayawada

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu, in his latest meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, made a fresh plea to the centre for the construction of metro rail systems in the cities of Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada.

As per the PTI, Chandrababu Naidu told the Prime minister that “a specific road map and an action plan has to be drawn and implemented” without any further delays.

It is a known fact that the state’s Chief Minister set August 2018 and December 2018 as the deadlines for the completion of the first phase of the metro rail project in Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam respectively.

Both the projects are being overseen by the Amaravati Metro Rail Corporation (AMRC).

However, apart from the conceptualisation, there hasn’t been much progress made in either of the cases. In fact, the centre had even rejected the proposal to build the project in Vijayawada questioning its financial viability.

Adding further to the chaos, ‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan also resigned as the principal advisor to Andhra Pradesh government in July last year.

AMRC Managing Director NP Ramakrishna Reddy was quoted by Indian Express as saying, “We are now getting a DPR prepared for the LRT. A consortium led by French firm Systra has been engaged for this while KfW of Germany is funding it. Once the DPR is ready, we will submit it to the Centre for approval.”

As far as the metro rail project in Visakhapatnam is concerned, it has been learned that the project’s first phase is projected to cover a distance of 42.54 km from Gajuwaka to Kommadi, under the GVMC limits.

The state government had decided to move forward with the Public Private Partnership (PPP) for the Visakhapatnam project with an estimated cost of Rs 8800 crore.