Hyderabad Metro Rail project has become an unlikely political hot potato amid the heat and dust of the Parliament polls, with L&T claiming that the free bus travel scheme has led to a decline in metro rail ridership.
It is not the first time that L&T has talked about selling off stake in L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH), the firm which has built and runs the metro rail operations for over 69.2 km across three corridors. It has gone public about getting out of the “non-core” business repeatedly. Yet, the ‘political’ statement in attributing the free bus travel scheme for women across Telangana to a ‘fall’ in metro rail ridership in the capital has got the government’s goat.
“Passenger fare revenue constitutes about 50-60% and ridership has been on the rise with close to 5 lakh passengers. The demand is for increasing the number of coaches and trips which it had failed to address. A proposal to get four three-coach train sets from Nagpur Metro was put on the backburner citing losses. The losses are due to a huge debt burden with high interest rates and not operational losses,” informed top government officials, pleading anonymity.
