Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) has announced that the remaining 5.5-km balance work from MGBS to Falaknuma in the Old City under the first phase of metro rail will be taken up by issuing land acquisition notices to about 1,000 properties within a month.
Preparation of individual sketches of the affected properties has started, and road-widening will be restricted to 80 feet to save several religious/ sensitive structures. At the same time, roads near the proposed stations will be widened to 120 feet, “learning lessons from the first phase of construction”, informed HMR managing director N.V.S. Reddy on Sunday.
Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao had directed the HMR authorities to start preparatory works for undertaking the remaining part of the metro rail work in the Old City a few days ago. The balance metro alignment is through Darulshifa junction - Purani Haveli - Ettebar Chowk - Alijakotla - Mir Momin Daira - Haribowli - Shalibanda - Shamsheergunj and Aliabad.
Mr.Reddy said the proposed five stations are going to be at Salarjung Museum, Charminar, Shalibanda, Shamsheergunj and Falaknuma. Though the metro station locations are about 500 metres from Salarjung Museum and Charminar, these two stations are being named after them in view of their importance and pride of place in the city, he said.
He also pointed out that there are 103 religious and other sensitive structures, including 21 masjids, 12 temples, 12 Ashoorkhanas, 33 dargahs, seven graveyards, and seven ‘chillas’ on this stretch. These are going to be tackled through engineering solutions such as adjustment of curvature, viaduct design and heights, suitable alteration of metro pillar locations etc.
Four religious/ sensitive structures continue to be a challenge for taking up the work but Minister for Municipal Administration & Urban Development K.T.Rama Rao had called for further “engineering refinement to the metro alignment to protect them”, he added.
L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH) had built the ₹14,132-crore first phase of metro rail in three corridors — Red Line (Miyapur to L.B. Nagar), Blue Line (Nagole to Raidurg) and Green Line (JBS to MGBS) — or a total of 69.2 km under the unique public-private partnership mode with the State government taking care of road widening, land acquisition and utilities shift while the Centre had pitched in 10% viability gap funding of about ₹1,458 crore. Of that, the balance of about ₹254 crore is yet to be released.
In this context, HMR’s announcement has not indicated if the government will fund the work since Mr.Rama Rao had recently stated that L&TMRH was not ready to take it up on its own.
